


Either must die at the hand of the other

by Metalomagnetic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Captive Voldemort, Dominant Voldemort, Kind Harry Potter, Multi, No Bashing, Smart Voldemort, Voldemort is a bad guy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29356095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metalomagnetic/pseuds/Metalomagnetic
Summary: Voldemort survives the Battle of Hogwarts because Harry Potter had not been the one to kill him, as the prophecy demands.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Voldemort, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 413
Kudos: 716





	1. Chapter 1

They’ll never be rid of _him_ , Harry thinks, hopelessly, as he walks beside Kingsley into the bowels of the Ministry.

Three days. They had three days of respite and most people spent them burying the dead or sleeping.

Three days in which they have been too busy grieving and trying to heal, to even have the time to be glad the Dark Lord is gone. 

But he isn’t. He never will be, it seems. Harry should have chosen to move on, back when Dumbledore offered it, in the Forbidden Forest. 

“We made sure he can’t use magic. Or -not effectively.” Kingsley is old. Older than he’d been three days ago. “Places like Azkaban or the holding cells here usually impede wizards or witches from using magic, but-”

“But he’s different,” Harry says, disheartened. He’s still in shock, had been since Kingsley had retrieved him from the Weasley’s, to privately tell him Voldemort is alive. 

No one is clear on why; they had taken his body after the battle, so Healers and Ministry officials could confirm Voldemort’s death, beyond doubt. And then he, apparently, woke up. 

“He’s good with wandless magic. Far more control than most of us. Even so, the charms dampen him sufficiently. We took him to our most secure room, in the Department of Mysteries. To tell you the truth, it’s a new room, equipped with new-contraptions that the last ministry had been working on. Ordered by Voldemort himself, it is said. It pains me to say, but they work better than any we have made before.” 

Trapped by his own inventions, Harry can at least take one small comfort in that. 

“And you tried to kill him?” Harry asks, even though he remembers Kingsley already confirming it. But Harry’s ears had still been ringing, reeling from the news. 

“Numerous times. Multiple Aurors. The Killing Curse, Decapitation Spell, even really dark stuff that I am not proud of using, but we had to try. Nothing works.”

And that is why they came to Harry. The Chosen One.

Harry is prophesied to be the only one able to kill Voldemort, so they are bringing him to do it. 

Only Harry already did it. 

_Not really._ A voice tells him. _You never cast a single offensive curse against him. Just Expeliarmus._

Voldemort had been the one to cast the killing curse, that, once again, rebounded.

The long corridor finally ends. There are eight Aurors standing guard beside a door. Wards shimmer in the air, so powerful that Harry’s skin prickles when he passes through them. 

Kingsley says something, but Harry is far too nauseous to hear him. He clutches his wand, tightly. 

The door opens. More wards. Another four Aurors, crammed in a short passageway. And then another door is opened and Harry walks through it, side by side with Kingsely. 

A room with no windows, no furniture. A harsh, bright, unnatural light almost blinds Harry.

Two Aurors and an Unspeakable stand inside, and in the centre, in a cage, is Voldemort. 

He looks like Tom Riddle, had Tom Riddle been allowed to age naturally.

Kingsley assumes Harry’s shock to be confusion or ignorance.

“His body started changing, before he woke up. We assume that is how he used to look, before all the magical transformations he made. We’re searching our records to confirm it. A name, to go with it.”

They don’t even know his name. For the first time, Harry wonders why Dumbledore never spoke it, to anyone, why he hadn’t informed at least Order members about Voldemort’s true identity. 

The cage is metal, barbed with rusty looking wires; it surrounds him and immobilises his body, so tight he cannot even move an inch. 

Voldemort’s wrist twitches at the sight of Harry, but he can’t do anything else. 

He might look like Tom Riddle, his complexion is pale, yet natural, his nose is there, straight and long, his jaws powerful, his cheekbones high and his hair dark brown, as are his eyes- 

But in those eyes, there’s nothing human, and in all that rage, Harry sees Voldemort very, very clearly. 

His heart hurts. His hands are so sweaty, his wand almost slips from his grasp. Harry is getting dizzy. 

It’s not just that Voldemort persists in remaining alive, though this is certainly huge. But it feels so wrong, for Harry to walk besides an adult, be backed by trained Aurors, all there for him, under the harsh glare of the light, and for Voldemort to be caged, defenceless.

This is not how their encounters go. 

Harry is so mesmerises by those eyes, so pinned by the rage in them, that for a minute, he cannot look away. When he does, he realises Voldemort’s naked. 

This body is as ridiculously tall as the serpentine one, but the similarities end there. His arms, held by the iron cage away from his trunk, are slim but muscular. His chest wider than his waist. Very long legs. And between them, his penis, heavy and-

Harry abruptly looks away, cheeks flaming. Wrong, so very wrong. 

“Is this necessary?” he spits out to Kingsley, though he keeps his eyes trained on Voldemort’s shoulders. 

“He needs to be restrained.”

“Naked,” Harry clarifies. “Why is he naked?” 

Silence. No one answers. It’s so oppressive, the lack of noise, it’s all so surreal. The worst nightmare he’s been into. 

_Please wake up. Please wake up_. But life is never kind to Harry, so he doesn’t. 

“Go ahead, Harry,” Kingsley puts a hand on Harry’s shoulder, his voice suddenly much gentler. Harry flinches, frightened. He’s heating up, he’s so over sensitive, so very aware of everything. “Try.” 

This is why he’s here. To kill Voldemort. This is why he’s been born, it seems, because it’s what he’s been trying to do, for a very long time, what he’s been prepared and raised to do. 

_Be done with it. So you can return to the Burrow, with your family. So you can hold Ginny close as she mourns Fred._ So he can be there for Ron, when neither can sleep. So he can help rebuild Hogwarts. Go with Hermione to Australia, to look for her parents. So he can finally start living, so they can recover from all the grief the monster before him has caused. 

Harry aims his wand. His hand is shaking. He hates him so much, so much-he knows the words. 

Yet-yet to kill-to take away a life… To attack someone that is naked and chained, defenceless. 

Voldemort glares at him and he doesn’t look defenceless at all, his face set in stone, radiating power only through sheer force of will. 

“Avada-” Harry tries but stops, mouth dry. He shakes harder. He lowers his wand. “I’m sorry-” He turns to Kingsley. “I-”

“That’s alright, Harry,” The man frowns at him. “You never-not once, in the war?” 

“Of course not!” Harry answers, surprised. Then he remembers this man was an Auror. A soldier. A grown one, that’s been through two wars. 

“I didn’t think. Let’s get you out of here, I’ll show you how to-” 

“Pathetic.” 

That voice, low and much deeper than what Harry recalls. Only he remembers this one too, from the diary. 

“Shut him up!” Kingsley says harshly, and the Unspeakable does something with his wand, the cage glows orange, hot, and it’s in contact with every bit of skin on Voldemort. 

Harry can smell it, flesh burning, and the room sways around him. He fixes his eyes on Voldemort’s face, who’s jaw clenches, muscles straining in his neck, but doesn’t let out a single noise. 

“Stop,” Harry says. “This-stop.” 

He can’t think. 

The iron returns to its natural colour again. 

Kingsley can’t teach him anything. He knows the words, he knows he needs intent. He just needs to do it. 

Harry raises his wand again, thinks of Fred and Colin, of Remus and Dora. His parents. Most of all, he thinks of Sirius, the only one to have been there for Harry, to make him feel safe, looked after, if only for a short while. 

Their eyes meet. 

“Avada Kedrava!” he says, determined. 

Nothing happens. 

Voldemort laughs. 

(-)

“You can try again later,” Kingsley reassures Harry once they’re away from Voldemort. “Your first try-it’s no wonder.” 

But he sounds disappointed.

Because nothing came out of Harry’s wand, no famed green light. Nothing. He’d failed to kill not only his enemy, but the monster that caused so much harm. Others failed too, but not for lack of wanting on their part. 

Harry doesn’t understand how it can’t work. He hates Voldemort. With all his heart, but-

(-)

“You’re not a killer,” Ron says, squeezing Harry’s shoulder.

Harry’s been terrified to confess, specifically to Ron, who’s just lost a brother to a man Harry couldn’t kill. 

“Kingsley shouldn’t have asked you,” Hermione is quick to agree. She looks so tired, big dark circles under her eyes. 

They’re all tired. They’re skinny and scratched and bruised and Voldemort has not one mark on him, no dark circles. Nothing. And Harry couldn’t kill him. 

“It’s because they-he is caged and -”

“I wouldn’t be able to do it either, Harry,” Hermione says, softly. “Perhaps, in the heat of battle, against an armed opponent, perhaps. But like that? We’re not executioners. We’re only eighteen for the love of God, we’ve been fighting our whole life, what more do they want of us?” 

Her eyes tear up, full of frustration. Hers are brown too. And as intelligent as Voldemort’s.

Yet Hermione’s are warm and familiar and loving. 

She deserves a life. Ron deserves one too. 

Harry will try again, for them. 

(-)

The next time Harry goes in, Voldemort is wearing a robe. Other than that, nothing changed. 

“Can’t I be alone with him?” Harry asks. If it’s just the two of them...maybe Harry can do it. As it is, under the watchful gazes of the Aurors, it feels like a circus. 

It feels sacrilegious. 

“No.” 

“He’s contained,” Harry tries again. 

Silence. 

“They don’t trust you,” Voldemort says. 

“Shut him-”

“No!” Harry says, a little too loudly, holding a hand up before the Unspeakable can do that thing again. “Please, don’t.” 

“This is why the don’t trust you,” Voldemort points out. 

Harry is very aware. He knows how it must look. Only, Harry is naive perhaps in thinking they were the good guys. That the good guys won the war. And good guys aren’t supposed to casually torture anyone.

Not even Voldemort. 

“Don’t let him get to you,” Kingsley says, firmly, when Harry fails to cast the curse again and he’s escorted to the Minister’s office.

He feels miserable. Weak. _Pathetic._

“We have to change the two guards that stay with him every six hours. He has an effect on everyone. He’s contained, yes, but we can’t seem to manage to shut him up in any way and his tongue is as dangerous as his magic.” 

(-)

Harry can’t sleep. The dead haunt him. The guilt. Voldemort in the graveyard, raising from a cauldron. Voldemort, in Godric’s Hollow, staring down at Harry from a window, as they barley make their escape. Voldemort in the Great Hall, furious. 

Voldemort in the cage. 

Kingsley obliviates the few that had found out, except a small number of Aurors that serve as guards and a few Unspeakables. 

The enchantments hold and Voldemort doesn’t escape. Harry imagines they try to kill him, now and again, with different methods. 

“Go on with your life,” Kingsley had said and Harry tries. 

He’s failing. He’s not the only one. 

Life after Voldemort isn’t all it was cracked up to be, even for those that do not know Voldemort is still around. 

George starts drinking. Mrs. Weasley is a wreck. Percy can’t look at George. 

Hogwarts is littered with graves. 

Hermione’s parents do not want to talk to her, fear in their eyes as soon as their memories are restored. 

Andromeda hates, torn apart. She doesn’t cry at Dora’s funeral, pained beyond tears, but she sobs at Bellatrix’s, rumour is. No one is sure how that rumour started, since from what Harry knows, only Narcissa and Andromeda had been present for the event.

Most Death Eaters are in Azkaban, rotting away. 

The Malfoys don’t leave their house, even after Harry testifies for them, gets their name cleared. 

Aurors hunt the ones that got away. 

It looks like it’s not that easy to just go on, with so many people missing. 

One man. It seems so impossible that just one man had this effect on thousand of people. 

(-)

Hermione gets special permission to sit her N.E.W.T.s in December as soon as Hogwarts is operational again. 

She had thrown herself in her studies and she gets eleven Outstanding. She’s the one to take advantage of the fame “the golden trio”, as the press dubbed them, had amassed. 

Harry hides in Grimmauld place, only leaving it to go to the Burrow. The dream he’d had of becoming an Auror had soured; he doesn’t have the stomach for it and besides, his dark wizard is still alive, even after Harry gave his best.

Ron is helping George with the store.

They aren’t as strong as Hermione.

“We didn’t go through all of this for nothing. I will make sure we will change things, for the better.” 

So she accepts an offer for a job in the Ministry that wouldn’t have been offered to anyone else so young. But she’s Hermione Granger, Harry Potter’s best friend, the one without whom he’d be dead, as he’d been sure to mention it, loudly and often. 

(-)

The world starts to recover, slowly, by the anniversary of the first year of the Battle of Hogwarts. 

Harry is just getting worse. He sleeps fitfully during the day and wanders around Grimmauld at night. 

Ron and Hermione live with him. They’re all trauma bonded, and they only just recently managed not to sleep in the same room. 

Ginny breaks up with him, softly, tenderly. She too is made from stronger stuff. She’s lost enough, she wants to live, and she can’t do that, surrounded by Harry, in a house of mourning and misery. 

Harry makes an effort to go see Teddy as often as he can. He looks a lot like Sirius, more and more as he grows up. 

“He looks like Bellatrix,” Andromeda counters Harry, when the observation slips from his mouth. 

Andromeda sees her sister everywhere. Especially in the mirror. 

She has another sister, and it seems the Malfoys start leaving their sanctuary, because Teddy mumbles excitedly about “Cissa” on occasion. 

Harry won’t fault Andromeda for gravitating to the last family members she has. 

(-)

He stills dreams of Voldemort, trapped in that cage. The graveyard Voldemort fades away, slowly, same for the other nightmares. 

He’s the best man at Ron and Hermione’s wedding. Best men for both bride and groom, because Hermione refuses to get a bridesmaid, insists he’s her best friend too. 

Harry’s heart soars, seeing them happy and together. They deserve it; they deserve everything in the world. 

A little part of Harry feels more lonely than ever, when he insists he’s fine and they should move out of his house. 

They want to stay, not because they like the decrepit old dark place, that stays dark no matter how much effort Kreacher puts into it, but because they don’t want to leave Harry alone. 

Harry will not hold them back, so he kicks them out. 

The world is healing-it’s not easy, it’s not fast, but it crawls towards “normal”. 

Harry despairs. 

(-)

“We’ve been trying to make him talk,” Kingsley tells Harry in his office, at the Ministry. “It’s not going well, suffice to say. He will not say anything.” 

“About?” 

“There are so many people we don’t know what happened to. That just disappeared. We’d like to know and bring closure to their families. And, Lestrange remains at large.” 

Harry nods. There’s been three attacks in the two years since the Battle. Very poorly organised, but enough to install that terror back into the population. The Aurors find some Death Eaters and they confirm it’s Lestrange that’s behind them. He remains elusive. 

“We offered some commodities, some comforts to him, in exchange for information,” Kingsley goes on. 

But only after torture didn’t work. Harry knows. 

“He is not speaking. But recently, he asked for you.”

Harry’s heart gallops in his chest, a phantom pain strikes his forehead. He almost touches his scar, but stops just in time. 

“Ok,” he says, after a long break. “Ok.” 

If it helps them catch Lestrange, or give some comfort to some families-Harry will do it. 

He will not admit there’s another part inside him, that hides behind these excuses, that wants to see Voldemort. 

(-)

There are deep dark circles under his eyes this time. There are scars on his body, that’s getting thinner and paler. 

But the rage is his eyes is intact. 

They’re left alone, Aurors retreating, because Kingsely said that after two years, he’s comfortable in the measures they have, and trusts they are keeping Voldemort restrained. 

Besides, he will not talk with anyone else there. 

It’s ...better. It feels more natural, just the two of them. Of course, Voldemort’s still caged, still naked, and Harry hates that it bothers him so much.

He comforts himself he’s not the only one. Hermione is on a campaign against the conditions in Azkaban, she’s hounding the Wizengamot to stop torturing information out of convicted Death Eaters. 

Harry has been dragged along to some meetings, and he backs her up, because she’s right, but mostly because he’s thinking of Sirius.

The Ministry agrees, somewhat. Only there’s nothing to do about the Dementors, who cannot be killed or let loose. 

The Aurors are unhappy with Hermione and Harry. They had been the ones to lose limbs and colleagues to apprehend the Death Eaters; they had been the most at risk and they do not care or understand some people can be bothered about how the scum of the earth is treated.

_“They thought me, as a muggle born, scum of the earth. They thought me an animal, undeserving of basic rights. We must be careful, very careful, to not become them and use their sick rhetorics. They must be punished, they must be kept away from the population, but they are humans, at the end of the day, and we must remember that.”_

The public doesn’t agree. It’s human nature to want revenge, especially after so many years of war. 

They want the Death Eaters to suffer. 

Merlin knows what they’d do or think if they knew the Ministry has Voldemort in its hands. 

Voldemort says nothing, glares at Harry, who shifts on his feet, uncomfortable to behold him this way. 

“Err,” he starts, when the silence is too much to bear. “Kingsley said you asked for me.” 

“You came,” his voice remains as strong as his convictions, even as his body is deteriorating. 

“If it will make you divulge some information-” Harry says, defensive. 

“Liar.” A short break. “Look at me.”

Harry cannot. “Just a second,” he mutters and almost flees the room. 

“Listen, I can’t talk to him that way. Can’t you at least clothe him?” he asks Kingsley. 

“He doesn’t deserve clothes.” Another Auror says. Robards. His father had been tortured by Death Eaters and his brother killed by Voldemort himself. 

“We will,” Kingsley agrees and Harry waits, on teether hooks, pacing around the corridor, before he’s told he can go back in.

It’s a huge improvement. Voldemort is wearing a robe, and he’s out of the cage, but still chained to the wall, heavy links around his hands and feet.

Like this, Harry can hate him again. “What do you want?” He asks and this time he has no problem meeting those brown eyes. 

There’s adrenaline rushing in his body; he hadn’t felt so alive since the Battle of Hogwarts.

“You will tell me one thing about the outside world, Harry Potter. And I will give something back.” 

Kingsley had said Voldemort is not allowed to know anything, he’s to be kept in the dark, literally and metaphorically. The only information he has, Kingsley says, is that Lestrange is still at large, because they have tortured him for clues on his whereabouts and then tried to bribe him for it.

Voldemort smirks, as if he’s reading Harry’s mind. 

“It doesn’t have to be anything of relevance. A minor detail. About yourself.” 

Harry draws a blank. He feels trapped, like a deer in headlights.

“I-” he starts, fishing for something, anything. “I-” he scratches his head. “I live at Grimmauld Place.”

There. Everyone knows that, anyhow. Journalists have been stationed outside the buildings for months after the war ended.

Voldemort watches him, eyes sparkling. He nods, slowly. 

“Caradoc Dearborn remains are in Epping Forest, forty feet south of Nott’s vacation cabin.” 

Harry has heard Sirius talk about this Caradoc long ago. He’d even seen the man in a picture, when Moody had shown him the old Order. 

“Who killed him?” Harry asks, because he imagines Dearborn’s family and friends would like to know.

Voldemort raises an eyebrow. 

“Ahh,” Harry stumbles, trying to come up with something to give in exchange. _Nothing of relevance. About yourself._ Harry doesn’t do anything. The little he does, is in Hermione’s and Ron’s company, and he doesn’t want to say those names to this man. Same goes for Teddy. “I-I’m studying Ancient Runes?” Harry offers. 

It is a stretch.

He’d only started because he’s trying to do something, about Grimmauld Place, make it cleaner, livelier, and Hermione had told him a house so old, under so many enchantments will not respond to regular magic. 

“Karkaroff,” Voldemort says, without missing a beat. “On your own or at Hogwarts?” 

“Ah, on my own.”

“It wasn’t a fast kill, from what I’ve been told. Oh, no. He took his time. I could go into more detail, but it shall upset your weak stomach.” He smirks, vicious.

“What’s wrong with you?” Harry snaps. “What happened to you that you’re this-” Harry cannot even find a word. “Like this.” 

“Nothing happened to me, Harry Potter. I was born, and this is who I am.” 

**A/N :** For those of you that are reading Ouroboros, have no worries, that story is still my priority. 


	2. Chapter 2

They find Dearborn’s bones, a day later.

There’s a funeral. His family is presented with an Order of Merlin, Third class, in his name. 

“Ask him about Lestrange,” Kingsley says, enthusiastic, pacing inside Grimmauld’s kitchen. “And Dolohov, he’s missing too, though so far he seems to be lying low, hasn’t caused trouble.” 

Only it doesn’t work like that. 

Harry finds Voldemort dressed already, when he next goes to the Ministry, chained but no cage. Kingsley must have finally recognised Harry prefers it this way.

There’s also a chair that hadn’t been there before, but it’s clearly not meant for Voldemort; his chains wouldn’t allow him to reach it. It’s meant for Harry, but he ignores it, standing beside it.

“Tell me about Lestrange,” he says. 

Voldemort tilts his head. “You tell me something first, Harry Potter. And I shall decide how important your offering is, what to trade for it. Rodolphus will cost quite a lot, I’m afraid.” 

Harry tells him he’s establishing a foundation for liberating House Elves and protecting other creatures’s rights. 

It wasn’t his idea, Hermione roped him and Ron into it, but he doesn’t say that.

Voldemort makes a sound that’s both derisive and amused, and tells Harry the location of a hideout he had used during the first war. 

(-)

It’s empty, just some bags of galleons and a few old maps. They find the plans for a battle that had taken part twelve years before and the remains of a muggle. 

Harry goes back every Wednesday. 

He tells Voldemort several things, as unimportant as he can, only he receives unimportant information in return. Bits and scarps. 

Harry will have to share something big; he tells this to Kingsely.

Yet Kingsely is adamant Voldemort is not to find out about anything major going on in their world.

“I’ve seen men tortured before; I’ve seen men kept captive. And they break, eventually. Now, we never- we never took it quite as far as we did with him; I’ve seen the effects Dementors have on prisoners, how they tame them.

He has been here for three years and _nothing_. He’s as proud as ever, as unrelenting. Unrepentant. We made the mistake, some two years ago, to bring Dementors-”

“You didn’t!” Harry groans. “Don’t you know Dementors worked for him, at some point?”

“We were desperate. We thought they wouldn’t obey a thwarted dark lord, that cannot give them anything. But the Dementors took one look at him, and they turned on us. We barley got them in hand. Luckily, it was just two of them. He’s not- he doesn’t look defeated, does he? He stands in that cage like it’s a fucking throne, looks down at everyone.

I don’t want him to get information about the outside world. I don’t- it’s safer, he doesn’t know. The scraps you gave him can’t hurt any, but Harry-” 

“Than I will keep it personal,” Harry says. “But I can’t tell him anything too private, with you lot listening in. I just can’t.”

“These are trusted men, Harry. Battle hardened Aurors, loyal to boot. I trust them to keep quiet, and they did, about this whole mess, I’m sure they wouldn’t -”

“No,” Harry insists. He knows what he’ll tell Voldemort, and no one can ever hear that.

There’s a hard bargain, but Harry wins.

They’ll have their privacy, next time, the charms for listening in the room and seeing it from afar will be taken out.

(-)

“I destroyed the Elder Wand.” 

Voldemort is shocked to hear this-he shows it only by taking in a sharp breath of air. He’s standing by his cage, some feet away from Harry, who still ignores the chair.

“Why?” 

Harry tells him about the Deathly Hallows. It is no danger, now that the wand is gone. He also lies that he threw the Resurrection Stone into the ocean.

He gets a lot of satisfaction when Voldemort finds out he had two hallows during his life, without knowing; that he turned one into Horcrux. 

“How did you find out about them?” Voldemort’s left eyes gives a twitch. It’s enough to convey his irritation. 

So Harry tells him of Dumbledore’s gift, the wild goose chase, the subtle hints, the golden snitch. He talks, more and more animated, as the minutes pass; it comes pouring out of him, the frustration he still feels for the Headmaster, the game of hide and seek he’d played with Harry, instead of just telling him, from the get go.

He tells Voldemort that he’d had a choice to make, to go for the Hallows or the Horcruxes, as he had seen in his head that Voldemort was on the wand’s trail. 

When he’s done, he looks at his watch to discover he’s been talking for close to forty minutes.

Harry’s paced around the chair, he’s used his hands to push his hair back from his eyes. Voldemort had not moved an inch. _Doesn’t he want to?_ Harry wonders. He must, after spending three years in a very limited position, locked securely in his cage. 

“Do you know a competent Curse Breaker?” Voldemort asks, no inflection in his tone, the first words spoken since Harry started talking.

“Why?” 

Voldemort ignores him. “If they’ll allow a curse breaker to come see me, I’ll have something for them.” 

(-)

Bill doesn’t know the captive man he sees is Lord Voldemort. Just a Death Eater, who’s identity had been kept secret during the war.

“I must say, that was-that was amazing spell work. Whoever cast that curse- I had never seen a curse so complicated and so long standing.” Bill says at dinner, excitedly, after working non-stop, for close to a week, in a team of four, following the instruction Voldemort had given him.

But at the end, Hogwarts is free of the curse. 

“We couldn’t even detect it, at first. Took us close to a day, to find it. Amazing. Absolutely amazing! Who is this man?” 

Ron goes pale beside him. Hermione is really interested to find out more about the proceedings and engages Bill for details for the rest of the dinner. 

The next Defence against The Dark Arts teacher is there to stay. 

(-)

“I’m so happy you’re here, Harry!” Ginny says, smiling.

They are at the Three Broomsticks; Harry hadn’t stepped foot in the village, nor in Hogwarts, since the war. It hurts too much, it makes him feel guilty, all over again, for going to the school, that fateful night, bringing Voldemort after him.

He rarely gets out of the house, except to visit Teddy, or the Burrow, or Ron and Hermione’s place.

It doesn’t help that _still_ , when he goes in public, the press hounds him. So Harry takes Teddy to Muggle parks and muggle ice creams shops.

“Yeah, mate! It’s good to see you!” Neville agrees, the new Herbology Professor, the occasion for the celebration.

They’ve all been shocked when Harry walked through the doors. The invitations to events had never stopped coming, but he almost never answered them.

Yet lately he feels a bit more ready to face the world. He feels a bit less useless, since wringing information out from Voldemort.

The whole D.A is there; or the least, those that had survived.

They all look older than they are. Luna has lost some of her airy disposition, Dennis drinks a little too much, freshly graduated from Hogwarts. Neville has a hard look about him. Parvati looks lonely, without Lavender at her side. There’s an empty chair besides her and no one takes it.

And yet, they do their best to smile at Neville’s stories about unruly first years, to laugh when Ron shows them some of the newest inventions he and George had made, to roll their eyes and fight sleep when Hermione goes on one of her tangents, that no one can understand.

When they depart, Harry promises to see them all more often.

(-)

With his last outing in mind, Harry tells Voldemort that he knows he once wanted to be a teacher, because Dumbledore showed him the memory. He tells Voldemort that he too had seen the appeal, because he’d started a group at school in his fifth year.

Well, he hadn’t started anything, and he’s still sorry for yelling at Hermione when she did, but he had grown to enjoy it. 

“For what reason?”

So Harry tells Voldemort about Dolores Umbridge, about her decrees and her quill.

He rubs the back of his hand, unconsciously, until Voldemort’s eyes trace the movement.

The scars are still there, if faded.

“She had your locket,” Harry says at the end, and Voldemort’s face is awash in disgust and revulsion. “That is why I broke into the Ministry, when you had control of it. To steal it from Umbridge.” 

“How did it end up with her?” There’s a glint in his eyes, a dangerous one.

“That’s a story for another time.” 

Voldemort’s jaw clenches. Harry thinks he’s about to say something unflattering, but no. 

“Where is she now?” 

Harry shouldn’t tell him; he’s fairly certain Kingsley wouldn’t approve, what with his strict rules. And yet, Harry cannot summon any concern over the woman, in the event Voldemort were to escape and find her.

He hates her somehow more than Voldemort. And he’s not the only one. Even after having Death Eaters invade the school, _twice,_ those who had been under her short reign, still shudder at her memory.

“Free,” he says, bitter. “In her house, knitting cat sweaters for a living. Hermione is trying to have her prosecuted, but the toad claims that she thought she was working under a legitimate government and we can’t prove otherwise, yet. Same goes for Thicknesse **.”**

Hermione is determined she’d eventually find enough proof to deal with Umbridge. The ex Minister hasn’t been convicted, but they still summon him for questioning, from time to time.

“Thicknessewas under the Imperius. I cursed him myself,” Voldemort barks. “Go to Acker, from the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He is a Death Eater. I doubt they caught him with it. He will be able to tell you more, about Umbridge.” 

(-)

Acker is _still_ working for the Ministry. The arrest is a scandal, provoking a ripple through the community.

At the trial, he testifies under Veritaserum and he has so many things to say about Umbridge. They both get a life sentence.

Thickness is offered a public apology. 

(-)

Harry lives for his Wednesday visits. It sneaks up on him, how much he looks forward to them.

He gets more energy during the week, more courage to get out and confront the press. He’s sitting in a small room with Voldemort, after all; he can deal with them.

“You look livelier,” Hermione comments. “More at peace.” 

“Do I?” 

He supposes he does. He’s found his goal again. He always had Voldemort to keep him motivated, through his school years and the Horcrux hunt, and now he has him again. 

(-)

Harry tells Voldemort about the Diary. How he came in contact with it, all their interactions.

When he gets to the part where Ron and him got to the Chamber, he mentions Lockhart was with them.

“I do not know of that man.”

So Harry has to explain Lockhart. But that leads to Lockhart vanishing the bones in his arms, so Harry has to explain Dobby; the cake exploding over Durselys important guests, the closed barrier, the cursed bludger. 

Voldemort laughs for the first time in these meetings. Well, he had laughed before, that evil, mocking laugh. 

This time, it seems genuine and full of mirth. 

“Your friends and teachers almost got you killed more than your enemies,” he comments. 

He laughs again, when Harry gets to the part of Lockhart Obliviating himself. 

Harry tells him about Tom Riddle, down in the Chamber. Quotes the boy exactly. 

Voldemort rolls his eyes. “I always had a dramatic flair.” 

And then Harry speaks about the basilisk, the horror that it was to be chased by the king of snakes.

As he speaks, Harry can’t quite grasp he’d been through all that and survived. 

“Stupid bird.” Voldemort wrinkles his nose when Harry mentions Fawkes arriving to his aid. “Stupid hat.” 

It’s Harry’s turn to give a startled laugh. 

“Did you like him?” Voldemort asks, tilting his head in the way Harry is learning he does, when he’s very curious. “Before you found out who he was. Did you trust him?” 

Harry looks away. “Yeah.” He lost so much sleep over it for years. One of the things he’d had in common with Ginny; they both felt so guilty to be so easily deceived. “Yeah, I did.”

A long silence settles and Harry becomes aware that he’s talking to _Voldemort_ , that he’s actually here for a reason, to gain information.

It’s hard to believe it, sometimes, because the Voldemort he’s accustomed to had always talked about himself, or tried his best to kill someone.

This Voldemort listens, is attentive, motionless. 

A lot like the Diary. 

“What became of Lucius?”

Harry shakes his head. “Can’t,” he shrugs. It’s one thing to ask about Lestrange, whom they need to find, and quite another to let Voldemort know one of his followers is free and cleared of all charges.

Voldemort’s jaw ticks as he stares into Harry’s eyes. “He got away, didn’t he?” He sneers. “You can’t all be stupid enough to fall for the Imperius excuse again.”

Harry stubbornly keeps his mouth shut.

A long silence falls, in which Harry allows his eyes to wander over a scar on Voldemort’s cheek, going up into his forehead, bisecting an eyebrow. It’s thin and white. Must be old by now.

“He’s not in Britain,” Voldemort says, eventually.

“What?” Harry frowns. 

“Rodolphus. They’ll never find him here.” 

Right. Right. Lestrange. His true goal. The whole point in these meetings. “Where?” 

Voldemort just smirks. 

“A hint, at least!” Harry demands. “Isn’t a story about your very soul important enough to exchange something?” 

“I did say something. They are wasting their time searching around here.”

(-)

Teddy swings his legs, perched on a park bench, as he throws away crumbs of bread to the circling birds.

He observes people passing by, and Harry has to be careful to always cast Notice Me Not charms, because the boy shifts his features often, imitating anyone that strikes his fancy.

He turns to Harry, a pensive look on his face, and his eyes turn bright green.

“Are you my dad?” He asks and Harry’s heart drops.

“No, Teddy,” he says, gently. “I’m your godfather, you know that. Remus was your dad-”

“I know. But he’s not here, is he? You are.”

It hurts.

He feels like shit when he returns to his gloomy house.

He doesn’t go to see Voldemort, the following Wednesday.

Harry’s been almost enjoying himself, playing detective with Voldemort, when so many people are still suffering, will suffer for decades.

(-)

“If you want me to return, you’ll give up Dolohov,” Harry says as soon as he enters. 

“You missed our last meeting. Why?” Voldemort’s eyes are full of rage, and only now it dawns on Harry that the last few times they weren’t. 

“Dolohov. I want Dolohov.” Harry is determined. He’s doing this for Teddy, so at least Harry can tell him the man who killed his father is where he belongs. In Azkaban. 

“I was under the impression he was apprehended already.” Voldemort frowns, a minuscule crest between his dark eyebrows.

“He isn’t, obviously.” 

“The cup,” Voldemort says. 

Harry breathes deeply and sits on the only chair in the room, for the first time. Only because he’s so tired, he hadn’t slept in days and he hadn’t thought the action through.

He soon realises it when he suddenly must look up at Voldemort. He jumps off it, as if burned.

Voldemort doesn’t react to any of it.

“I found out about the cup from Hokey’s memory, that Dumbledore retrieved,” Harry says, stepping away from the chair.

“Hokey?”

“Hepzibah’s elf. That you pinned the murder on.” Voldemort’s face is priceless. “We saw when that poor woman showed you the cup and the locket. We guessed you turned them into Horcruxes. But we did not know where the cup was. I found out at Malfoy Manor, when I was captured. Bellatrix seemed terrified, when she saw we had the sword of Gryffindor. She stopped Lucius from summoning you until she found out what else we took from her vault. It made me think she’s hiding something important there; I was desperate, without any other leads, so we went to Gringotts, as you know.” Harry says, fast and heavy, because he’s not in the mood. “So, about Dolohov-” 

“How did you destroy it?” 

“At Hogwarts, with a Basilisk fang.” 

Ron and Hermione had done it. But while Harry realised, after he talked about the Diary, that Ron’s named slipped into the story, so did Hermione’s, that’s quite different from telling the man they destroyed his soul.

“I’ll speak with Robards about Dolohov.” 

(-)

“The lead was legitimate. The house was recently inhabited, and we found a wand that belonged to Yaxley, at some point. However, we have Yaxley in Azkaban and he confirmed Dolohav had taken his wand, when he lost his own, at Hogwarts.” 

Kingsley runs a hand over his face.

“It’s still a start,” Harry offers. “He doesn’t know where Dolohov is, so it will be tricky.” 

Kingsley nods, slowly. “What are you trading for this, Harry?” 

“Nothing important.”

“It must be important. He’s cooperating.”

“It isn’t. It is, to him, but it can’t help him any. Trust me.” 

Kinglsey doesn’t look certain. 

(-)

“They’re like a herd of agitated Hippogriffs.” Voldemort shrugs when Harry says Dolohov was not apprehended. “Auror raids are many things, but never subtle. Dolohov is fast and paranoid, and incredibly careful.” 

He exchanges another possible location, after Harry tells him about the Diadem. 

(-)

“Lost him again. But Robards saw Dolohov this time! He escaped by sheer luck!”

Harry lets out a frustrated swear. 

(-)

“My, my. The incompetence is phenomenal.” 

“Just give me another location.” 

Voldemort raises an eyebrow. “Shall I remind you, Potter, that I don’t know where he is? And there are only so many places he could go. The last two hideouts he used, he almost gotcaught. He might take a hint and just hide in a cave, somewhere.” 

“I know you don’t know. But it seems you’re good at guessing. You know him. Give me another one.” 

“You? Not Robards?” 

“Not Robards,” Harry says, determined. 

Voldemort smirks.

“Don’t get yourself killed, Potter.” He considers Harry for a second. “Do not go alone. Dolohov will demolish you.”

Harry is tempted to say, _“I beat you, didn’t I?”_. Only it would be a lie; Voldemort defeated himself, in the Great Hall.

“Take that Curse Breaker along. He has a good head about him.” 

He gives up the location without asking anything from Harry. 

(-)

They get Dolohov. 

Harry, Ron, George and Bill. It feels exhilarating, to be in battle again, however short, to flirt with that danger, the adrenaline. 

He doesn’t know what to do, in times of peace. Dumbledore prepared him for war and hardship and no one ever showed him how to live in peace. 

Just how to survive. Survive until it was time to sacrifice himself. 

In the second they’re not paying attention, George kills a bound, wandless Dolohov.

The plan had been to bring the Death Eater to the Aurors. 

“What?” George snarls, when they all stare at him, in shock.

As they burry Dolohov, in a dark forest, without talking to each other, Harry thinks the world would be in a much safer place if George were to be the Chosen One. 

(-)

“The ring,” Voldemort demands. 

“Dumbledore destroyed it,” Harry starts. “He went to the Gaunt shack and got it, alone. He -he tried to use the Resurrection Stone and your curse, whatever it was, took hold.” 

Voldemort smiles, a terrifying sight. “So, I _did_ kill Dumbledore.” 

Harry supposes that yes, in a way, he had. 

“I don’t know what he used to destroy it, I assume the sword. By the time I laid eyes on it, it had ceased to be a Horcrux.” 

“Did you use the Resurrection Stone?”

Harry swallows, hard. “Yeah.” 

Voldemort’s eyes spark. “Your parents? Or _dear_ old Dumbledore?” 

“My parents,” Harry spits out to their murderer. 

“You never knew them,” Voldemort says. “How can you possibly be so attached to them, if you never even met them?” 

Harry opens his mouth, ready to say something nasty only-

Voldemort truly doesn’t understand. Nothing Harry will say or do, nothing anyone could do-Voldemort will not get _it_. 

“Did you never imagine your parents, growing up?” Harry asks, trying to be calm. “I know you must have, you searched desperately at Hogwarts, to find your ancestry.” 

“Every young orphan fantasies about parents,” Voldemort says. “ _Young_. I was over it by the time I was five. I knew I was alone, and I was all that was needed to move forward.” 

He says it simply, without feeling. There is no place for pity, for it being something tragic. Voldemort’s tone holds no inflection, truly believes this is normal, and that is the most tragic part. 

“Certainly, I wondered again, when I found out I was a wizard. It is natural to be curious. Tell me, Harry Potter, I noticed from your little stories, you are not fond of Slytherins, is it true?” 

“I’m not.” 

“Why?” 

“Are you kidding me?” Harry snorts. “They’re all bullies, entitled, self-serving brats.” 

Voldemort nods. “And how do you think these rich bullies reacted to a dirt poor orphan, with a muggle name and a Cockney accent being sorted into their House?” 

Harry’s face falls. How, indeed. He thinks of Malfoy’s arrogant face. 

“Err,” Harry says, unintelligently. He’d never thought about this. Voldemort had always been surrounded by sycophants. He never imagined a time when he mustn’t have been. “Not very well?” 

“Not very well,” Voldemort confirms. 

“But you were a bully too, so I’m sure you got along great.” This is Voldemort. Harry will not pity him. 

“At the orphanage, one would need to steal, to not go hungry. It was during the depression, food was not that easy to come by. The strong stole from the weak. We were all bullies. I had my magic, to help me steal more. Be more.” 

“I know.” Harry says, absentmindedly. 

“You know,” Voldemort says, flatly. A bit annoyed.

“Dumbledore,” Harry explains. “Mrs. Cole told him.” 

There’s a short silence. “At Hogwarts, they called me a Mudblood. I didn’t think I was one, so yes, Potter, I wanted to learn who my parents were. And I found out. I have no regard for either of them. I do not get offended, in their name. I never knew them. You never knew yours. How can you possibly be so easily prickled by their mere memory?” 

Voldemort is missing something, deep inside and Harry sees this, truly sees this now, faced with a question that he cannot answer. Voldemort seeks a logical explanation, and there is none. 

“You killed your father,” he says, instead. “So you had some feelings towards the man.” 

“I never thought about him, after finding out it was my mother that had been magical. I assumed he was dead or perhaps had run away scared when faced with a pregnant woman. Many did, it was the reason a lot of children ended at Wool’s. I did not care.” 

“You went to kill him. That implies care.” 

“I didn’t.” 

Harry opens his mouth to contradict the lie, but Voldemort cuts over him. “I went to see my uncle, Morfin. You know about the ring, the shack, so I am to assume you know about him as well.”

Harry nods. 

“As soon as I entered, he confused me for my father. It was him, who brought Tom Riddle Senior up. He told me he was living just across the street. So I went. And yes, that big house, all that money...it enraged me. He had my face, too, and that-” Voldemort frowns, distracted, for the briefest second. “It bothered me.” 

He’s telling the truth. In Morfin’s memory, he was indeed the one to bring Tom Riddle Senior up. Young Voldemort did not seem to know who he was talking about.

“He knew who I was, of course. His parents knew it too. It was hard to deny it, with our resemblance. He called me a freak. He asked me to leave. Told me he will not give me money. I admit, I have a temper. Especially back then. I got angry, and I killed them all. But were someone else to have killed him, before I even knew him, I wouldn’t have cared, not at all. After all, I killed my own mother, to be born. Should I hate myself, is that what you’re suggesting?” 

“No, of course not. It’s very different. You didn’t kill your mother-”

“I did. Were it not for birthing me, she would have lived.” 

“You didn’t mean to. It was not your fault. On the other hand, you decided to go kill my mother.” 

“No. No, I did not. I offered her the chance to step away.” 

Harry stops. He can hear it all over again. 

_Step away._

 _No, not Harry-please._

“Your father had no wand.” Voldemort shakes his head. “The stupidity. They know the most dangerous dark lord in the world is after them, and James Potter did not keep his wand close. In any case, he didn’t have one. He came at me, empty handed.” Voldemort snorts. “If he had hid or bowed down to me, I wouldn’t have killed him. But he attacked me so he died.”

Harry’s heart is hammering in his chest, wildly. 

“And then I went up the stairs. Your mother was in front of your crib. Her, I gave three chances -perhaps you don’t believe me, but I did. First, I told her to-”

“Stop,” Harry says, his voice shaking. “I know. I know already. Stop.” 

“How could you know? Dumbledore wasn’t there-” 

“I hear it, when a Dementor is close by,” Harry says and he feels his cheeks wet. He wipes at them, furious. “I saw it in your head, when you remembered it.” 

Voldemort blinks at him.

Harry leaves. 


	3. Chapter 3

Would his parents understand? Would they judge Harry, for not being able to kill the man that murdered them?

Harry doesn’t know, because he doesn’t know them. He knows _of_ them, but that is different. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry begs. “I’m really sorry.” 

It’s raining in Godric’s Hollow and Harry can’t help but feel his parents are sending him a message, as he stands beside their graves.

(-)

“It seems he was telling the truth; Lestrange might not be in the country. There was an attack in Ireland. We’re working with the Aurors there. We believe he makes incursions in England, but he’s not living here.”

Harry rubs his temples.

“We really need to get him. So we can put all this mess behind us,” Kingsley insists.

(-)

“You stopped inquiring about Antonin,” Voldemort remarks, after Harry tells him how Dumbledore suspected Nagini was a Horcrux and how Voldemort confirmed it by keeping the snake so close to him. 

Harry stiffens. “I lost interest,” he says. 

“Hmm,” Voldemort tilts his head. Harry can see a brand new scar on his neck, angry and purple. “Robards still seems greatly interested.” 

_Shit._

Harry hadn’t thought about it; that they will continue to interrogate him for Dolohov’s whereabouts.

“What shall I give you, today?” 

“Lestrange?” Harry asks, voice small, but Voldemort just shakes his head, once. It was worth a shot. “Alright. Why do you look like this?”

Harry shouldn’t ask for this; it’s not helpful to anyone, Kingsley can’s use this information to solve anything or capture any stray Death Eaters.

“My other body, it was temporary,” Voldemort says, after a slight break. “This is how I’m meant to look.” 

“But how are you alive?”

“How are _you_ alive?” Voldemort asks, voice very low. “I saw you die, in the Forest.”

Harry's skin prickles with foreboding. “I- if you give me Lestrange, I’ll tell you.” 

He doesn’t want to. He really doesn’t. It’s different, talking about the rest of the Horcruxes but -

“You shouldn’t touch your scar, when you talk about Horcruxes,” Voldemort says. “Or when you think about them. It is very telling.” 

Harry freezes. “You-you know?” He splutters. 

Voldemort looks at Harry, gaze searching. “As you can see, there’s not much to do around here. I had a lot of time to think, these past three years. Yes, Harry Potter. I know.” 

Harry looks away, but this time he is aware his hand shoots up to his scar. He aborts the motion, mid way. 

He waits, half terrified, to hear Voldemort’s input on it. To ask Harry about it, how it was to be a human recipient for his soul.

He’d never told a single soul, not even his best friends, though it’s quite possible Hermione put it together. 

And if Hermione put it together, then so did Voldemort. Harry shouldn’t be surprised.

“As for why am I alive,” Voldemort says and relief washes over Harry, mixed with surprise. “I imagine it has something to do with the prophecy. I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t heard it, but here I am, alive.” 

And Harry is so relieved Voldemort just let it drop, he too is eager to change the subject. 

_“And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives.”_ Harry quotes. “That was what you missed.” 

Voldemort’s eyes flash. 

“I assume you can’t die because it wasn’t me that killed you, but that does not explain the other part. We’re both living, as you can see, so-” 

“Interesting wording,” Voldemort says. “Does anyone else know?” 

“Ah-well, pretty much everyone knows there was a prophecy, and while no one heard it, the guesses and speculations are surprisingly accurate.”

The press still refers to Harry as The Chosen one or The-Boy-Who-Lived. Never mind that he’s twenty.

“Hmm,” Voldemort seems displeased about it.

“The power that I have, and you know not...” Harry starts, curious. “Dumbledore said it was...love,” he says, cringing, because it sounds so lame. 

That makes Voldemort laugh. “ _Love._ That old fool. I wonder if he believed the shite he was spewing.” 

Harry is taken aback; Voldemort never swears, he seems too-elegant to lower himself to such. 

“What do you think it is, then?” 

“It is very obvious.” 

“Well, not to me. So?” he asks, impatient. “What’s my power?” 

“You were the Master of Death.” 

It hits Harry like a bag of rocks. _Love_ , indeed. 

“That is why I couldn’t kill you; why the curse rebounded. It wasn’t just the Elder’s Wand allegiance. It was your title, exactly as Dumbledore intended. It is good to know you are without it, now.” 

Harry should not have told him he destroyed the Elder Wand. 

Kingsley is right. Chained as he is, Voldemort does not look defeated. 

(-)

Harry stays away. He had dropped his guard; without realising, he made a mistake.

_It doesn’t matter what he knows. He will never get out._

Only Harry doesn’t believe that, not with utmost confidence.

There’s an influx of babies after the war; every year some more. Hermione’s advanced pregnancy, and her stubbornness to keep working, land her in the Daily Prophet often. People look at these children with hope- the generation after Voldemort is coming, they say.

And there Harry is, aware they are not, in fact, post Voldemort. That he is alive. _Waiting._

It feels like hubris, to think they can keep him locked away forever.

When Ron asks him to be godfather to their unborn baby, Harry knows why. Of course he does. But a small part of him wonders- Ron and Hermione are among the few who know where Harry has been spending his Wednesday in the past months.

Don’t they blame him, just a little? Aren’t they afraid, especially now that they are about to be parents, that something will go terribly wrong?

(-)

His worries only grow when Kingsley tells Harry there have been some troubles with the guards. Nothing major- one Auror, that Kingsley said is amongst the very rare to protest at what she had called “inhumane treatment”, had been sneaking magazines into the cell, had been standing close to the cage, folded the pages just so, for Voldemort to read them.

All precautions had been taken from the start, to ensure they leave no one vulnerable to Voldemort- two Aurors are always in the cell with him, when Harry is not there. Five more are always at the doors leading into it. 

They aren’t allowed to talk to him, unless he is being interrogated.

Despite that, somehow Voldemort hoodwinked one.

 _It was just a couple of Muggle newspapers and the Witch Weekly,_ Harry reassures himself as days pass.

The Auror only wanted to be kind.

Harry thinks about it at night. About that _chair._

It makes Harry feel as if he’s at the zoo; as if Voldemort is a rare breed of exotic animal, caged and restrained and there for Harry’s amusement.

Harry is well aware of what must happen to him down there. Of what had happened in the beginning, when they were trying to kill him, by whatever method, and later on, when they were trying to get information out of him.

Of what still happens, from what Kingsley says, on the anniversary of the Battle, or on the anniversary of the death of one of the Auror’s friends or family members.

Voldemort is an easy, deserving target on which to unload the ire and frustration one feels in those terrible days.

And it must be bad, if even one of the Aurors had protested to it, made her pity Voldemort, out of all people.

A part of Harry feels bad, too. It’s hard to pity Voldemort. Firstly, because he is not a pitiful creature, even caged and kept in an underground room. Second, because he’s _Voldemort_.

Yet- yet he is still a human, underneath his title, underneath the massacre he’d unleashed upon the world; no matter how rotten he is inside, he is an intelligent human being, and to treat him like that leaves an unpleasant taste in Harry’s mouth.

He feels the same about Azkaban; since Sirius and the way his eyes had darkened when talk of the prison came up, Harry cannot rejoice at anyone being sent there, no matter their crimes.

But Harry doesn’t see those prisoners every Wednesday. Doesn’t see them getting thinner and paler, doesn’t see fresh scars now and then.

(-)

He stays awake in bed, imagining Voldemort in his cage, under constant guard. He imagines the silence, the boredom.

Three years of _nothing_.

And one Auror had tried to treat him like a human being, had been kind enough to bring him insignificant papers, gossips and muggle news, just to make it easier.

The first of his guards to show him a small mercy, lost her job and all her memories of him. Harry wonders if that doesn’t reinforce Voldemort’s beliefs that kindness is a weakness. That kindness is never repaid.

One Sunday morning, after having a little too many glasses of ancient Black wine that he finds in the cellars of Grimmauld, the question comes to Harry.

What if she was the first person ever to treat him like a human? Or the first in a very, very long time.

Who else would have? The Death Eaters had worshiped him like a god; his enemies had looked at him like a demon.

Did anyone remember he was just a man under his previous serpentine features?

Does Voldemort himself know it?

Probably not. Harry himself hadn’t seen him as anything remotely human, not as he was being chased and hunted by the man.

But he’s seeing it now; he’s forced to, as they sit and talk.

In the safety of Grimmauld Place, with sunshine breaking through the windows, Harry reassures himself that Voldemort will not free himself. That Harry is just paranoid; he _still_ sees Voldemort as omnipotent, when he clearly isn’t.

Three years had passed since he was captured, tortured, humiliated. Voldemort cannot escape his entrapment.

(-)

He turns into a shut in again, and he’d only just started to try to get out more.

He paces throughout the house, thinking.

About the war, about the prophecy. About Dumbledore.

What would Dumbledore say, where he still alive? What would Dumbledore do?

Harry doesn’t know. The man remains an enigma to him.

Harry’s mentor. Harry’s executioner, along with Voldemort.

Harry loved- _loves, still_ \- his old Headmaster. He understands his reasons, had heard the shame and grief in his voice, in King’s Cross-

_You were dead. There was no King Cross. You hallucinated the whole thing._

No, no, he hadn’t. Dumbledore must have found a way to communicate with Harry. Dumbledore had liked Harry, had truly cared for him.

Only the Professor had been a leader in a war waged against a dangerous maniac.

Dumbledore had done what was needed.

Harry only wishes he’d have told Harry about the Horcrux in his scar. About the Hallows. That he’d had trusted Harry would not pursuit them.

Harry had gone back to his grave and broken the Elder Wand, in a fit of rage, during the first few months after the Battle.

It was the responsible thing to do, he comforts himself. It was, he thinks, what Dumbledore would have wanted. To ensure it never ends up in the wrong hands.

(-)

“Harry dear, you look quite sickly,” Molly says, when she drops in to leave some of her home-cooked meals for him.

Kreacher mumbles under his breath, insulted.

“You should get out. Come visit us. Ginny sent you a ticket, for one of her games. We’re all going to see it and she’d love to have you there.”

He’s hard pressed to say no- Molly isn’t really asking, anyway, a hardness hiding in her gentle tone.

Molly is determined, after Fred, to never lose any of them again. She watches after Harry, as much as he allows her, loves him like her own son.

She’s as bossy as any mother, so Harry goes along to the match.

But he doesn’t really watch it, even if his eyes follow Ginnny through the air.

His mind is with Voldemort.

_What is he doing right now?_

Nothing. He never does anything. He’s trapped there.

_But what is he thinking?_

(-)

Unable to let go, unable to move one, five Wednesdays later, Harry returns.

They weren’t expecting him.

They Aurors seem agitated, but Harry pulls his status and his permission from Kingsely, so they let him in to see Voldemort even if they don’t want to. Luckily,Robards isn’t there, or he wouldn’t have allowed it.

Harry enters, a little tense, knowing Voldemort doesn’t like it when he misses these meetings, and he’d missed a lot.

There’s a lot of blood on the floor.

Voldemort is unconscious in his cage. 

Harry rushes over, all instinct, pulls out his wand. He tries cutting hexes, with no success. One of them cuts Voldemort on the arm, and he doesn’t need any more injuries. 

He moans, low and pitiful, and Harry’s stomach clenches. He starts panicking, ready to call for someone- _who would you call? They did this_ \- when one brown eye opens. 

“I didn’t mean to!” Harry says, desperate. “I’m trying to get this thing to open! Relashio!” he tries. Nothing. 

“Exolutus,” Voldemort says, tone low and tired. 

“Exolutus!” Harry says. Still nothing. 

“Focus. Calm down and focus. Intent matters more than incantations, Harry Potter.” 

Harry takes a big breath, closes his eyes, and envisions the cage opening. “Exolutus!” he whispers and the cage opens, Voldemort spills out of it and onto the floor. 

For a second, he just lays there, in his own blood, his eyes closed. He’s naked again, Harry notes. He’s gotten very thin. 

And then he’s trying to get up, but he slips on the wet floor, in his own blood.Instinctively, Harry moves to help.

“Don’t touch me!” Voldemort snarls, all menace, and Harry draws back, raises his wand because that hiss reminds him of _who_ this is. 

Voldemort doesn’t try to get up again. He simply moves a few inches to the right, supports his back on the wall and raises his very long legs to his chest. 

Harry lowers his wand when nothing happens. He gets his robe off and tosses it over at Voldemort’s feet. 

Voldemort ignores it, staring at Harry, all rage. 

“What happened?” Harry asks. 

He doesn’t answer. 

Harry should leave. He should leave and yell at Kingsley. This is unacceptable, Voldemort or not.

He doesn’t. Slowly, he sits on the floor, as far from Voldemort as the room allows, gripping his wand tightly, because for the first time, Voldemort is not chained, though he is wearing heavy-looking bracelets on both his wrists. Harry had assumed it was part of the chains, but clearly not. 

“What are those?” he nods at the contraptions. 

“Magic inhibitors,” Voldemort gives a derisive snort. “Invented them myself.” 

“Serves you right,” Harry says, mad, because he knows just for who those were meant. For Hermione. For Muggle-borns. 

Voldemort closes his eyes, eventually leans his head against the wall. He looks tired. With his eyes closed, he looks very human indeed. His hair is long, though when Harry first saw him in this cell it was short. It’s past his shoulders, now. 

He has the beginning of a beard too, and that is just - _wrong_. Very wrong. It looks nothing like Voldemort. 

“Tell me something, Harry Potter.” 

“What?” Harry asks, mesmerised and horrified. 

“Something pleasant.” 

It _hurts_. 

It’s hard to think of anything pleasant. His life hasn’t been very pleasant. And with him, here, with the smell of blood in the air-

“This happened in my third year,” Harry starts. 

He describes the weather, first. The anxiety from the locker room. The wind in his hair as he lifted from the ground. 

He describes the match, goal by goal, fault by fault. How he zigzagged into the sky, dogged bludgers. How he spotted the golden snitch. The dive for it. The moment he closed his fist around it. 

“We won the Cup. For the first time, since I was at Hogwarts.” Such simpler times. “You weren’t there, that year, to terrorise me.” 

Voldemort hums. “I apologise. I believe I was held up in Albania, still reeling after the effects of unicorn blood and possessing Quirrell. I assure you, if I’d have been well enough, I would have been there.” 

Harry laughs, startled. A joke. Voldemort, joking. 

“That’s alright. There was Sirius that year to keep me busy.” 

Voldemort opens his eyes, turns his head to look at Harry. “You killed Pettigrew. We found him strangled to death, down in the cellars of Malfoy Manor.” 

Harrys’ heart almost stops, remembering that awful, awful day.

“Odd, that you could kill him and not me.”

“I didn’t. He-he was considering allowing me to escape. His hand, the silver one, just wrapped itself around his throat and-there was nothing I could do! I tried to pull it off, Ron tried-it just wouldn’t let go.” 

“Ah,” Voldemort says, disappointed. “Me, again.”

“Yes,” Harry agrees. “It was you.”

“He had as much of a part in your parents’ death as I did. One would say, even more reprehensible. I was their enemy. They were fighting against me. He was a trusted friend. And yet you saved his life, when Black wanted to kill him and you tried to save his life, once more, at Malfoy Manor.” 

“Killing is wrong,” Harry says because he does believe it. He always did. 

“How in the world did you survive?” Voldemort looks at him and he really is very tired, because his face is much more expressive than usual. “You’re mediocre at best, in magic. You’re selfless, ready to sacrifice yourself for anyone, unwilling to injure even wizards that are coming after you, the first to speak up against injustices committed against your biggest enemies, naive beyond stupidity. And there you are. And here I am.”

Harry has no idea what to say to this. 

“Dumbledore,” he shrugs, in the end. “He orchestrated all this. The Hallows. All the clues. And my friends; I’d have died loads of time, without them.” 

“No honourable mentions to my Horcrux, I see.”

“What?” 

“Did you ever bother to read something about Horcruxes or did you leave it all in charge of that walking encyclopaedia that is Granger?” 

“Weasley,” Harry corrects, distracted. 

“No, definitely Granger. I am told Weasley is at best as ignorant as you are.” 

“I meant, she’s Weasley now. She and Ron married.” 

“My best wishes,” Voldemort quips, sarcastic. “Did you read about the very thing Dumbledore sent you to hunt?” 

“No,” Harry admits, embarrassed. 

“No,” Voldemort repeats, incredulous. “Destroyed my Horcruxes, never even read a line about them. Incredible.”

“I-she told me what I needed to know. How to destroy them.” 

“She should have told you about the protective properties a Horcrux has. How resistant to damage they are.” 

“I do know about that. I had to carry your stupid locket around my neck for close to a year, because I had no means to destroy it-”

“You were a Horcrux! You were a vessel. The Horcrux protected its vessel, in order to protect itself. Nothing could have killed you, save for basilisk venom, Fyendfire or myself, the one who made the Horcrux.”

It leaves Harry speechless. 

“It was the Horcrux, that helped you survive, in your first year, that killed Quirrell. Your eyes flashed red at me and I was too out of my mind to understand what that meant. I thought it was “a power I know not” or that you truly were a remarkable wizard. I could touch you just fine, after I got my body, not becauseyour mother’s _love_ was in my new body, but because the Horcrux in your head recognised me, when it hadn’t recognised me when I was possessing Quirrell. I should have seen it.” Voldemort looks pissed off, and for a second, he falls silent.

“ _And either must die at the hand of the other_. Because I was the only one that could kill you and you were the only one able to kill me-not by any merit of your own, but of course, my curse would have rebounded, because you became the Master of Death.”

Harry just stares at him, shocked. It certainly makes more sense than “love.” Belatedly he too wonders if Dumbledore knew the reason why Voldemort hadn’t been able to kill Harry, but had to come up with something else, as he wasn’t willing to let Harry know he was a Horcrux.

“I am a great wizard, Harry Potter. No one is as great as I. Not only am I a genius, an effortless one, unlike your Miss Granger-Weasley that needs to swallow dictionaries, but truly effortlessly genial. That is one part. The other, is my magic. Ask your friends, about their control of magic, before they got a wand. Some barley manifest. Mudbloods would have ended up killed by Muggles if they had that much power and used it. I alone could use it at my will, with perfect control. That is what got Dumbledore so worried. Not just that I was cruel and a thief, but because I could control magic, even without not knowing what it was.” 

Harry knows most people do not have advanced feats of magic before eleven. He asked Hermione, Ron and many of his classmates. As eleven-year-olds, they all talked about it. It was only accidental and very minor things. Except-

“I was good too. Not like you, I couldn’t control it, but I used magic many times. I even Apparated, once, when my cousin and his friends were chasing me. Straight on a roof top.”

“Yes,” Voldemort says very slowly, as if Harry is too stupid to understand. “My Horcrux was keeping you alive. Protecting you. Try to Apparate without a wand now, Harry Potter. See what happens. Your wand didn’t choose you. It chose the horcrux in you.

Without me, you’d be a little brat, no better than Draco, spoiled and entitled.” 

“I’d have had parents!” 

“For how long? Your parents were fighting in a war. They were twenty-one, young and foolish and fighting against _me_. Do you know how many people I killed? Have you seen the duel at the Ministry? I held Dumbledore off -and he was an extraordinary wizard, wielding the Elder Wand.

I would have killed your parents eventually, Harry Potter, the way I killed so many others. Frank and Alice Longbottom were older, were skilled Aurors, unlike your parents that had no jobs or actual life experience, and they fell to Bella and Rodolphus. You’d have been an orphan anyway, even without the prophecy, and you’d be a no one. My Horcrux made you great. Without it, you’re just a boy that breaks apart when he sees the blood of his greatest enemy on the floor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You don't need to take Voldemort's explanation on how the Horcrux works at face value. If you liked the explanation from cannon, about how it all went down, you can assume Voldemort is either lying or guessing wrongly.  
> If you like his explanation better, you can also go with it.  
> It will not make much of a difference for the main plot of this story.  
> That aside, I want to remind people that this will not be a nice Voldemort; he won't be as cartoonishly evil as in cannon, or as two dimensional.  
> I'll give him some depth and development, but he is not, in any way, a good misunderstood guy.  
> I just want to make sure people that like to read a redeemed Voldemort know what they are getting into and won't be disappointed.  
> Thank you for reading and share your thoughts, if you wish!


	4. Chapter 4

Hermione comes with Harry to see Kingsely, that very afternoon.

She more waddles than walks from her Department to the Minister’s office, but somehow that makes her even more terrifying.

He lets her do the talking; she is far more eloquent. 

“I will not stand for torture. This must end, Minister. With all due respect, we did not win the war so we can turn into our suppressors.”

“He killed Robards.” Kingsley says. He sounds exhausted. 

“What?” Harry splutters. “How?”

“He didn’t _kill_ him, kill him. But Robards was the one to stay with him, in that room, the longest. To guard him. He killed himself, two weeks ago.”

“That is highly regrettable, sir.” Hermione says, after a brief break. “I am sure Voldemort would drive many men to suicide, but it is not exactly his doing. Even if Voldemort killed him with his own hands, torture is still not a solution. It will not bring Robards back. It just creates more monsters- do you think torturing Voldemort will have no effect on the men that did it? Do you not worry that it will turn them-” 

“You’re not there with him, Hermione. He is such a pice of- he’s nasty. Incorrigible. He toned it down, while you were coming to talk to him,” He looks at Harry. “But when you stopped, he was back at it again, antagonising every living thing that went near him.”

Harry feels guilty, which is silly. He’s not responsible for Robards. He certainly isn’t responsible for Voldemort’s words and actions.

“Minister, if I ever hear he’s being treated inhumanly, I will go to the press.” Hermione is very good at blackmailing. She has experience. “Naked and caged and unfed also constitutes as torment, in my book. In any human rights book. Have you read the Geneva Convention? I shall send it to you.”

They bicker back and forth. Kingsley isn’t happy with the Aurors’ behaviour either, but he doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal, and he doesn’t understand why Hermione and Harry make it into one.

Hermione wins, as she’s prone to do, when arguments are involved. 

“Thanks.” Harry says, back in Grimmauld Place. 

“I suppose it was the right thing to do.” She says, still inflamed. She gives Harry a glance. “But- Harry, why are you going there?”

“You know why. For Lestrange and all the others.”

It looks to him that she’d like to say more, but she doesn’t, clenching her jaws.

“Hermione?” He asks, hesitant.

“Yes?” She waits patiently as Harry gathers his words.

“Did you know? About the Horcrux? About me?”

“Oh, Harry!” She sits beside him on the couch, eyes getting wet.

She’s pregnant. She shouldn’t be upset. He shouldn’t drag her across the Ministry to fight on Voldemort’s behalf, either.

“I suspected- the parseltongue, the visions- but I didn’t want it to be true!” 

“He said his horcrux, inside me, was protecting me. That I couldn’t die, because only he could kill me, besides basilisk venom or Fyendfire. Is that true?” 

She sighs, wiping at her eyes. “In theory. You know those are the only things to destroy a Horcrux- or amongst the extremely few. But that is for objects. No one wrote about a human or animal vessel, so I cannot be sure. Living organisms- I don’t know. No one knows.” 

“How did I not read about it?” Harry asks, bothered. “I made you do all the research-”

“Harry-” 

“You know it’s true. All our school years, you did everything. I was so aware this overpowered psychopath was coming after me, and what did I do? Did I bother to study, to learn as much magic as I could? No. I played Quidditch and slacked off, barely did my homework. No wonder he’s fucking pissed he lost to me, of all people.” 

“You’re a great wizard, Harry!” Hermione says, fiercely. “Don’t let him get to you.” 

(-)

Because he truly is a weak, pathetic fool, he returns. He can’t help himself.

Voldemort looks better. He’s shaved and properly dressed, with trousers and shirt and robe. The cage is nowhere in sight, though the magical inhibitors remain, and he’s chained to the wall by his leg. 

There are two chairs now, in the room, and a cot with a mattress and a particularly uncomfortable-looking pillow. 

_I shared a soul with this man. For seventeen years. That’s why I can’t let go._ Only he can’t be sure if it’s only just that. 

“I feel like I should have died, in the Forest. Since I came back, I don’t feel like I belong.” Harry says what he cannot say to anyone else. “I feel distanced, from everyone else, like a wall is separating me from the world. It’s when I lost the Horcrux.” 

Voldemort watches him intensely, a strange glint in his eyes. “I don’t think it has anything to do with it.” He says, surprising Harry. “Dying is a transforming experience. No one returns unchanged.” 

“No?” 

“I should know, I died plenty of times.”

“So you feel this too. Like you don’t belong.” 

“I’ve always felt that way, since I was born.”

Said so simply, so matter of fact. As if it means nothing.

“But after Albania, it was like you say; food tasted like ash. Drinks did not quench my thirst.” 

“And now?” 

“I wouldn’t know. I’m yet to be fed.” 

“They should, I requested they do-”

“Oh, I‘ve been told about your demands. But apparently, food is not a necessity for an immortal being. I do not mind. I am not hungry.” 

Harry rarely is, himself. 

“What did you do to Robards?” 

“Not worse than what he did to me.” Voldemort answers, brow raised. “Such weaklings the Ministry holds in their employment, these days. I would have never gotten to Moody. It is a sad day, Harry Potter, when you miss your old foes, because the new ones are just so pathetic.” 

“I bet you wish it was Dumbledore here, instead of me.” 

Voldemort tilts his head. “No. I do not. You were never my enemy, I realise. You are just a very passive recipient of an unrelenting obsession. Did he tell you, about your scar, or let you figure it out on your own, as he was prone to do? Did he have the courage to look you in the eyes and tell you he raised you like a pig to slaughter?” 

Harry waits a long time before answering. “It won’t work.”

Voldemort gives him a searching look. 

“You won’t be able to turn me against him.” 

“Undoubtedly. He sent you to your death, and you obeyed, like a good little dog; there’s nothing I can do to change your mind about him, if that didn’t do it.

Can you imagine him, Harry Potter, as he sat in that office of his, for months, years, and he plotted on when and how to have you sacrificed?” 

Harry does, occasionally. On really dreadful nights. 

“He did what he had to.” He says with conviction. 

Voldemort regards him carefully. “And after all that scheming, arranging all his puppets in the ideal position,” he smirks. “Here I am. I won.” 

Harry blinks at him. “I would hardly call this winning.”

“I’m alive.” Voldemort says softly, almost in a whisper. “It is all it takes.” 

Harry suppresses a shiver. It’s complicated with Voldemort. His grandiose sense of self, his delusions- Harry isn’t always sure what’s just empty brags or - _more_.

They stay in silence for a while. 

“There is one last left.” Voldemort breaks it. “We’ve discussed all the Horcruxes, except one.” 

And after it’s done? Harry wonders. _What is there left to say?_

Harry tells him about the locket. About Regulus Black. Kreacher. Grimmauld Place, having held it in his hands. with everyone present, when they first found it during the cleaning. About Mundungus stealing it. Umbridge taking it from him. The plans to go to the ministry. Ron, splinting; the tent, the months on end of starving; the locket affecting them all, but especially Harry; the fight with Ron. Going to Godric’s Hallow, his wand breaking when Nagini trashed it.

The despair. 

Voldemort listens without interrupting as Harry pours his soul out. He needs a break, when recalling those very dark days, without his wand, without Ron. 

“Did you dream, about me?” Voldemort finally speaks, some two hours after Harry first started. 

“Yeah. I had glimpses of your whereabouts, you were tracing Grindelwald, sometimes you got mad or -”

“No. Did you dream, about the Horcrux, in the locket?”

Harry looks away. No one knows this. He told no one.

Tom Riddle had been twenty something, young and handsome and so much more than Tom Riddle at sixteen.

Harry was older too, wiser. He didn’t let the Horcrux speak, he didn’t trust a single word he was saying. So Tom stopped speaking.

And started _acting_. 

“I see.” Voldemort says, deliberately, when Harry fails to answer and he feels his cheeks redden. 

“I’m certain the others dreamt about him too.” He says, defensive.

“Indeed. It made Weasley abandon you, played on his insecurities. That is what it does. Finds your weakness, your worst fear and use it again you. Or, of course, finds your _desires_.” 

Harry wishes the floor would open up and swallow him. “Anyway, Ron returned. Just in time. Because Snape found us, through the portrait. He put the sword in a lake and I was dumb enough to dive in, with the locket on. I would have died, if not for Ron.”

“You wouldn’t have died.” 

_Right. The Horcrux_. “Well, still.” 

“So, you finally had the sword. And the locket. Together.” 

“Yes. I destroyed it.” 

“Did you, now?” Voldemort leans back into his chair. “Harry Potter, haven’t you learned lies do not work with Lord Voldemort?” 

Harry panics, because he always made it seem like he destroyed them all. He and Dumbledore, because he doesn’t want-

“I don’t care. You were all children, sent on a suicide mission by an old, meddling goat. He’s responsible. I cannot possible hate Weasley and Granger more than I already do. I don’t even care who did it. But I know it wasn’t you. You couldn’t, could you? You got attached.”

“They were affected too-”

“Affected, yes. But not _attached_. How could they be? The Horcrux in you recognised the one in the locket. Yearned for it.” 

“Yes” Harry says, fast to latch on to that. Yes, it was the Horcrux’ desire to be joined by the locket Horcrux, not Harry’s. 

Voldemort smiles, and it is a significantly different smile than the other ones Harry had witnessed so far.

It is predatory.

“How are you now? I mean-” Harry bites his lip. “When I died, I saw the Horcrux. It was-it was dead, too.”

And in so much distress. 

“I wanted to help it, but Dumbledore told me it is too late to help. Are you just the piece of you that was left, in the Great Hall?” 

“No. I am whole, once more.” 

“But all the Horcruxes died-”

“So did I. And yet here I am.” 

“I don’t understand it.” 

“Magic is not terribly concerned with logic. And I always was an exception. Extraordinary.”

“Extraordinarily full of yourself-” Harry mutters. 

“The fact that I owned the Resurrection Stone,” Voldemort pretends Harry hadn’t interrupted him. “Even more, turned it into a Horcrux, certainly had some effects. I cannot be sure what, since I never studied the Hallows.”

“I can bring you the Beetle and the Bard.” Harry offers, even though it will be impossible to give it to Voldemort; it will be confiscated immediately. But perhaps he can read it while Harry sits there for the visit.

_And what will you do, stare at him as he reads a children’s book?_

“I would like that. But, at the end of the day, it is only a fairytale. There must be proper studies, out there. Genuine History.”

Harry never researched it. Once again, he only did the bare minimum.

It’s only when he leaves that he realises he hadn’t asked Voldemort for anything in return. 

(-)

Voldemort starts the next meeting by telling Harry he’d given the current Head Auror, Robards’ replacement, the counter-curse to a spell he invented himself. People are still suffering from it, in St. Mungo, with Healers unable to fix them, years after they have been cursed by Death Eaters.

“That’s good.” Harry says, stupidly.

“We have a deal, do we not?” Voldemort asks and Harry suspects he’s being mocked, but he can’t prove it.

Silence falls. Harry is out of things to say. The Horcruxes are done with, the Deathly Hallows out of the way- there’s nothing else.

His life hadn’t got any more interesting. The most exciting thing to have happened recently was the discovery of a cabinet filled with what looks like old pictures in Grimmauld’s attic. But Harry can’t open it, and neither can Kreacher, and while it will surely amuse Voldemort to hear how a piece of furniture is defeating Harry on a daily basis, it’s not exactly anything worthy.

The silence stretches on. To get it out of the way, Harry speaks.

“I heard you caused problems, with some Auror.”

Voldemort smiles, entertained.

“Did you notice all my guards are male now?”

“Ah-”

“Of course you didn’t. Typical Gryffindor. No eye for detail.” Voldemort sits as still as he used to stand. He truly makes the dingy chair look like a throne.

“You should have seen them, Harry Potter, in the beginning; how careful everyone was; how _tense_. But time erodes caution. Routine slows the mind. They got complacent. Some forgot who I am- they have problems connecting this human face with the monster from before. Others remember all too well, but they too got comfortable, confident I cannot fight back.”

 _Which one am I?_ He thinks. _Do I see him as a bit of both?_ But no. Harry isn’t comfortable; not at all.

“Robards took that girl away from me. But he fired the other two women in the small band of moronic guards. And they had nothing but contempt for me, but they were guilty of sharing the offender’s sex. And they call me a bigot.”

“You are a bigot.” Harry is quick to remind him, though he shudders to imagine what Hermione would have to say about this snippet of information.

“I am.” Voldemort allows, nonchalantly. “And I am also set on proving to these idiots that men are not impervious to my charms. Already got my eyes on one. Looks promising.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I’ll alert Kingsely-”

“Go ahead. He’ll fire everyone, Obliviate them, bring others. As long as he brings me people, there will always, always, be one to take the bait.”

Harry sighs, pushes a hand through his hair. “You’re just boasting.” He says. “It’s nothing. What’s the big deal, anyway. A bunch of papers-really, just a kindness.”

“While I can’t claim I’ve ever read Witch Weekly before, that was certainly my mistake. Knowledge can be found in the most curious of places. Between recipes for pumpkin pie and the best way to clean the carpet, I learned quite a lot about you. Miss Skeeter truly seems to adore you.”

Harry groans. “It’s all lies. She’s impossible.”

“I’ll admit I cannot help but like the woman. Wormtail used to read me the articles she wrote about you during the Triwizard Tournament, waxing poetically about your bright green eyes.”

Harry shakes his head, groaning. 

“And then,” Voldemort goes on, gratified to embarrass Harry, “she switched. You know what they say, nothing like a scorned woman’s wrath. She’s as vicious with that quill as I was with a wand.”

“Made my life a living hell.” Harry mutters. “Worse than you, really.” Harry’s fifth years at Hogwarts had been dominated by Skeeter and Umbridge, the terrible duo.

“I do wonder, what you had on her, to make her give that surprisingly honest and accurate interview about that night in the cemetery.”

“She was an unregistered Animagus. Well, she’s registered now, but she wasn’t back then.”

Voldemort laughs. “And here I was, thinking you above such things, forcing people-”

“It wasn’t me. I would have never figured it out.”

“Ah. Yes, of course.”

“After the Battle, she had the nerve to come around and argue that she alone gave me the chance to tell people the truth about your return, in that Quibbler interview.” Harry spits, still furious about it. “That she was the only journalist to tell the truth and alert the community.”

“Such a Slytherin. During my short-lived reign, there was pressure put on her, to publish propaganda. But she would not, claiming she was busy writing a book that will discredit Dumbledore.”

“She sure was.” Harry growls.

“Quite a gift it was. It’s through her book, that I learned Grindelwald had the Elder Wand-”

“I know.” Harry says and when Voldemort’s eyebrow raises, Harry just points at his scar.

Harry remembers seeing it in Voldemort’s head, finding the book in Godric’s Hallow, just as Harry had escaped him once more. 

“And now I got to read her articles about the saviour, the hero Harry Potter.”

"Don’t believe a word of it.”

“But I find there’s always some truth to her stories. Poor Harry Potter, raised by Muggles that despised him.”

And wasn’t that a scandal when Rita had gotten hold of the Dursleys. It painted Harry as a victim and the Dursleys as monsters, far more than they really were, which Harry would have said was impossible to do, but she found a way.

Hermione insisted it did a lot of harm, having wizards learn that Muggles treat magical children that way, especially someone like Harry, whom they love.

“Not all Muggles are like that.” Harry says what he’d told in the only interview he gave, after the Battle, forced to reassure everyone that there is no need to hate Muggles. That Dursleys were exceptions, and even so, they weren’t as terrible as Rita had portrayed them.

Voldemort just shakes his head, slowly, as if astounded by Harry’s insistence that the world isn’t black and white.

(-)

The Dark Mark shines sombrely over the house. Four dead, parents and children, Muggle-borns and half-bloods. 

The outrage is tremendous. The panic makes people mad. 

Trust in Ministry is at an all-time low, ever since the fiasco with Fudge and then Thicknesse, allowing Voldemort to gain control of their world. 

This just is the final nail in the coffin. 

“He has to tell us about Lestrange.” Kingsley demands after the press starts questioning the Ministry’s ability to keep them safe. 

Voldemort refuses.

“I’ll stop coming.” Harry threatens. 

Voldemort gives him a death glare. For a second, Harry can almost see a spark of red in them. 

“You can not blackmail Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter.” 

(-)

Harry stays aways to prove that he can, in fact, blackmail Voldemort.

He is almost tempted to join the Aurors, to become a dark wizard catcher, this time under the law. He too is outraged by the last attack. They’re growing in daring and frequency.

Harry hates seeing people frightened again, shops closing on Diagon, j _ust in case_ , wizards and witches walking hurriedly on the street.

(-)

Hermione gives birth and Harry becomes a godfather for the second time. Rose is the youngest, tiniest baby he had ever held in his arms, and it makes his knees weak.

Ron is the same, shaking with happiness.

There’s a brief moment, when they are alone in the room, as Weasley family members keep coming and going; just the three of them and Rose.

Hermione’s laid on the bed, her daughter snuggled at her chest, Harry and Ron on either side of her.

Their eyes meet in turn, and a powerful feeling that settles over them.

 _We made it_ , Harry thinks. _Somehow we made it out alive, against all odds, and now Rose is here._

Eventually Harry goes home, and he decides to walk, instead of going by Floor network.

Ron and Hermione have a family, a proper one and it’s what they deserve, what Harry wished for them to have.

_And what do you have?_

 _I have them_ , he scolds himself. _I have Teddy_.

(-)

Two more attacks happen, all in under three months. Only one victim dies, but several others are severely injured.

Harry returns to the Ministry, determined to make Voldemort talk. _Somehow_.

He finds him back in the cage, naked again and full of blood.

“That’s it, that’s fucking it!” Harry snaps.

He pulls out his wand and breaks the cage open. Voldemort is conscious this time, and he steps out of it on with more grace than the last time.

Harry pulls off his robe and throws it to him, but Voldemort doesn’t take it, staring at Harry.

“Why are you so damn proud?” Does Voldemort hate him so much as to not even wear his clothes, preferring to stay naked instead?

“Why haven’t you learned to transfigure a pice of anything into a robe? You’re in your twenties!” Voldemort snarls back.

“Because I am stupid, that’s why.” And speaking of stupid…”Can you make an Unbreakable Vow with those on?” He nods to the bracelets around his wrists.

“No.” Voldemort looks at him. “But I can make a magical oath.”

“What is that?”

“Same principle. I would swear on my magic. I cannot use it, with these inhibitors, not much.” He gives a very soft smile. “But I can certainly swear on it.” 

“If I get you out of here, will you swear to not leave my house? To not try to escape?”

Voldemort spends a long time thinking. “They will never let you take me.”

“I know you have a very low opinion of me. I can’t even blame you. But I am Harry fucking Potter, and I did far more impossible feats. I broke and stolen not only from the Ministry but from Gringotts.” 

(-)

Kingsley remembers it.

“I will tell them. Everyone. I will, I swear I will. I’ll go to Skeeter, If I have to.”

“You’re asking me to _release_ him!” Kingsley is shocked.

“We will take all precautions, he will keep the cuffs, he will take an oath, and he will help us with Lestrange. You said the inhibitors work; and they do. If they hadn’t, he’d be out already. Because it’s not the seven Aurors that stop him, I assure you!”

“It will end very badly.” 

“If he is to escape, he’ll escape from here too.” Harry points out. “Eventually, he will. Now or in a year or seven or one hundred. He is Lord Voldemort.” Something in Kingsley’ tired face tells Harry he knows this too.

“You are having problems with the Aurors. One day, someone will slip up. The more people you expose to him, the more options you are giving him. I am the only one that was ever able to stop him, albeit temporarily. Grimmauld is safe. I know him, I’ve known him all my life, it’s not like he can fool me.” Kingsley's skeptical expression raises Harry’s blood pressure. “I will take him, Kingsley. Unless you plan to kill me, I will take him.” 

For a second, Kingsley seems to consider it. 

(-)

“I swear on my magic I will not leave Harry Potter’s house, without his company or permission. I swear on my magic I will not try to escape. I swear on my magic, I shall not kill him.” 

_Or hurt him_. Harry waits for Voldemort to say it, because they wrote it down as a demand. Kingsley waits too. 

Voldemort stares at them. 

Harry sighs. _Oh, well._

“That’s good enough for me.” He says.

The Unspeakable casts a spell at Voldemort. “The oath took hold.”

Finally. They’ve spent hours on it, with Voldemort refusing several different formulations.

_“How do you expect me to say I will not hurt any living being? The oath could take that to mean a mosquito.”_

_“People, then.” Kingsley countered. “You will not hurt any people-”_

_“I could hurt someone’s delicate feelings.” Voldemort gives Harry a mocking glance. “And the oath might interpret that as hurting, as well.”_

Through it all, Kingsley kept looking at Harry, as if hoping Voldemort being impossible would change Harry’s mind.

It hadn’t.

“On your head be it, Potter.” Kingsley says and leaves the room without another word.

“My, my. _“Potter”_. That was positively frosty.”

“We have to wait here a bit longer, as they secure the house.” Harry says, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

Aurors are blocking his fireplace, sending Kreacher to Hogwarts, emptying the house of any potion ingredients, because Voldemort might not be able to do magic, but he has just little enough to manage a potion.

Voldemort had put on a robe- not Harry’s, it’s still lying on the floor- but one that the Unspeakable had provided. He stands as still as always, no expression on his face.

“Aren’t you happy?” Harry asks. “To get out of here?”

“Do you strike me for a fool, to be grateful that I am leaving a cage only to get trapped in another, albeit bigger one?”

“You should. You won’t be treated badly there,” Harry says.

“Comfort doesn’t matter to me. Only freedom and magic. And I can’t have those.” Voldemort clenches his jaws. “Yet.”

“Why are you so antagonistic?” Harry doesn’t understand it.

“That is who I am, Harry Potter. Would you rather I pretend to be something else? You should be honoured that I do not.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m _very_ honoured.”

It’s dawning on him, what he’s actually doing, now that he has time to think.

He’s taking Voldemort _home_. In Sirius’ house!

 _Sirius hated that place_. Besides, Sirius would understand. The Ministry wouldn’t be able to contain him for much longer. But now he made an oath, and that’s for life.

 _He is desperate to get out of here, surely_. If he took suchdrastic measures, he must be desperate to get out.

Voldemort might be able to find a way out of the cuffs, eventually, but for as long as Harry lives, for as long as Voldemort lives, he will not be able to break the oath without losing his magic.

That is the only reason Kingsley hadn’t actually killed Harry, and went ahead with this lunacy.

“Five minutes,” an Auror says, opening the door briefly, to let them know.

“Is that the one?” Harry asks, adrenaline making him dizzy. “The one that you said looked promising to fall for your tricks?"

Voldemort looks at Harry, tilts his head in disbelief.

“No, Harry Potter. That was you.”


	5. Chapter 5

“This is appalling,” Voldemort says as soon as they enter Grimmauld Place.

Harry can’t argue with him. Despite all his attempts, while at least it’s clean, Grimmauld remains old and shabby, bleak and cold.

Wallpaper is missing in places and Harry cannot replace it, by Muggle or magical means; the furniture is chipped, but it will not move, not more than a few inches.

Kreacher was of no help, suggesting Harry _get along_ with the house, think of it as _home_.

“Yeah, I bet Malfoy Manor was much more to your taste.” 

“Indeed.” 

An eery silence surrounds them. Part of Harry’s brain hadn’t caught up with the rest, and it’s still in disbelief that he’d brought Voldemort to his house.

That Voldemort is really there, standing in the foyer, as still and stiff as he’d been in the cell.

“Lestrange,” Harry reminds him, choosing to cling to the notion that this is what spurred the decision that had brought a dark lord in his house.

“One of you should have considered to include Rodolphus in the oath,” Voldemort gives him a smirk and Harry’s blood chills. 

“You said you would-”

“My word means nothing, if it’s not in a magical binding oath. I’m a habitual liar, I would say anything, Harry Potter, to get what I want. Besides, I never said I will give you Rodolphus. You assumed.” 

“I can take you back,” Harry says through gritted teeth.

“I am aware. I was simply pointing out how foolish you are, how rash. Think before you act. I shall need an owl.” 

“An owl,” Harry repeats with distrust.

“Yes. I have no idea were Rodolphus is. I’ve been locked up since the Battle. Now, of course, we can go the Antonim route, trying to find him, from place to place, but surely Rodolphus must have caught on there is a traitor speaking about our old hideouts when they kept getting raided.” 

_Merlin._

“But you made it seem like you knew where he was. You said that he isn’t here-”

“What did I just tell you, about me and lies?” Voldemort sighs, as if personally offended by Harry’s credulity. “I _suspect_ he is in France, at some of his relatives, but he could be anywhere. So- an owl.”

_France? Not Ireland?_

“I want to see what you write,” Harry tells him sternly, leading him down the hallway.

 _Just casually strolling with Voldemort._

He has a flashback of his fifteen-year-old self, of Order Members coming and going, making plans on how to defeat the very man that is now calmly entering the kitchen where dozens of people used to eat.

He remembers being seventeen, huddled with Ron and Hermione around the very table he shows to Voldemort, as they made plans on how to steal the Horcrux from Umbridge. 

“Very well,” Voldemort concedes. 

Harry gestures for him to sit, brings him pen and paper, stashed in one of the cupboards.

It’s a muggle pen, but Voldemort doesn’t seem bothered, holds it with a confidence and ease that comes from practice. 

_Rodolphus,_

He starts, and the writing is remarkably familiar to Harry, the same one from the Diary, neat and elegant, that Harry has nightmares of, on occasion.

_I am alive, though a prisoner._

_Let me first command you, for your efforts and extend my condolences, for Bella._

_I am grateful to have had you as my loyal man._

_To secure my release, I expect you to give yourself in. Your services, while deeply appreciated, are no longer required._

_D’s whereabouts are needed._

_Lord Voldemort._

“No way he’ll believe that!” Harry insists. “No way. Anyone could have written it. Even if he knows your handwriting, it could be copied-what’s D?” 

Voldemort rolls the parchment.

“It is how he will know no one is impersonating me.” 

“But what is it?” 

“Nothing, Potter! A code. For him to know it is I that is addressing him.”

Harry takes the scrolls, unrolls it and reads it attentively a few times. He’s determined not to be tricked, again. He points his wand at it, casting several spells meant to detect any foul play.

He finds none.

He gets Voldemort to follow him-Harry had expected Voldemort will be difficult about it, and he was just starting to panic- _how am I supposed to get him to move if he doesn’t want it?_ \- but, for once, Voldemort complies, with no witty remarks.

Harry’s new owl, Midas, is slumbering in the living room. He blinks at Voldemort with his big yellow eyes.

“Go, boy! Be careful!” Harry whispers as he ties the roll to his leg.

Midas flies away once he opens the window, and that is that.

It seems too easy. It seems mad that Lestrange will believe, despite the code, or that he’d actually just hand himself in following the orders of a captive, fallen master. 

Harry shows the house to Voldemort, room by room, except his own; Harry still sleeps in his godfather’s old bedroom.

He makes a shitty host -

_“this is the dining room, but it’s never used.”_

_“this is a guest bedroom. And um, so is this one- and the next.”_

_“I don’t know what this is, really, but ahm, yeah- here’s an old piano-”_

The house is huge and looks even worse, outside of the few rooms Harry actually spends time in.

Voldemort looks around, emotionless, right beside Harry.

He’s tall. Harry never truly appreciated it, had never stood so close to him, so it was never as evident, the difference in height.

Harry barely reaches his shoulder, and he hates it.

He gives him Sirius’s mother’s rooms.

It’s as decrepit as the rest of the house. An old poster bed, though at least it’s huge, with dusty sheets; a massive wooden desk that must have looked impressive some fifty years before, and a generous, empty armoire.

It has its own bathroom, but Harry doesn’t even want to look inside to see the state of it.

“I’ll-uhm- bring some clean sheets. And towels. And -ah-” He scratches his head. He really hadn’t thought this through, at all. “And I suppose you need clothes. There’s some in the attic. They’re old but-”

Sirius’s been tall too, so Harry hopes some of his male relatives had shared that trait and Voldemort can find something.

_Until I can buy him some._

Buying Lord Voldemort clothes-

Harry frowns. He’ll have to leave the house for that.

 _I so didn’t think this through._

Voldemort is not pleased, but Harry knows he must be ecstatic to be out of the ministry’s cell, no matter how much he protests about dust and moth eaten drapes. And then he slams the door to his room in Harry’s face.

Harry stands there, unsettled.

_What will you do, stay glued to his side for- for however long this will take?_

_Forever_ , Harry thinks, a little hysterically. _This is forever._

But he refuses to think about it. Focus on the present.

Harry can’t realistically just stay around him all day. The man made an oath.

 _I will not harm Harry Potter_. He hadn’t said it. He only sweated not to kill him.

Harry spends minutes standing like a fool, until he hears the water running.

With a shudder, he goes back to the kitchen, but he doesn’t know what to do with himself, sits there quietly, trying to process it.

(-)

It’s dark when he finally feels ready to move.

He finds Voldemort in the library, buried between books. He has this expression on his face, raw and happy, like a child in a chocolate factory. He hadn’t had it as they left the Ministry where he was tortured and beaten, but he has it now, surrounded by ancient tomes. 

He’s also apparently been to the attic where he’d managed to procure a robe that fits him perfectly. It’s a little old-fashioned, but in surprisingly good condition.

Of course, it has green accents around the collar.

He ignores Harry when he enters, but scolds his expression back into nothingness.

Harry seats on a couch and watches him.

He tries to read, picking a random book, but after his eyes go over the same sentence some twenty times, he gives up.

The tall grandfather cloak, adorned with snakes, ticks the hours away.

Harry struggles to keep his eyes open, after an especially stressful day, once the adrenaline had left his system. 

Incredibly, when time drags on and nothing happens, he falls into a fitful sleep. When he wakes, the sun is high in the sky and Voldemort is still reading, unconcerned. 

(-)

Heavy pounding on the front door brings Harry down from the library, at the crack of dawn. Walburga starts shrieking.

“Oh, shut up!” Harry snaps at her as he runs past.

When he opens the door, both Ron and Hermione are standing there, wands drawn. Harry hurries out of the house and closes the door behind him.

“What are you doing?” He whispers.

“Tell me it’s a sick joke!” Ron yells.

“Kingsley said-”

Harry grabs their hands and moves them off the stairs, to the corner, away from any windows Voldemort might watch them from.

“Listen, I couldn’t leave him there. They would have slipped, at some point, and then he’d have escaped-”

“Harry, you brought You-know-Who in your house-”

“Oh, seriously!” Hermione makes a face. “It’s Voldemort, Ron! But yes, how could you think this is a good idea?”

Her hair is frizzier than ever, complexion deathly pale.

Ron, on the other side, is bright red.

“I just had to,” Harry will never be able to explain it to their satisfaction. Mostly because he doesn’t really understand himself. “Listen, Hermione, you know what they were doing to him and I just- it’s better this way, anyhow. He’ll give us Lestrange, he made an oath-”

“It’s insane!” Ron shakes his head. “Mate, come on! I know you have unresolved issues but-”

“What?” Harry snaps. “What _issues_?”

“Ron!” Hermione hisses. She pushes a strand of hair out of her eyes.

Some passersby are giving them strange looks, but neither hide their wands.

“I have to go back inside,” Harry says, after a few seconds.

“When were you gonna tell us?” Ron demands.

“When my owl was back!” Harry answers, a bit coldly. “I wasn’t hiding anything. There was simply no time. I’ll write, when Midas returns. Or if you want to hear from me, you send your owl. But don’t come around.”

“Why?” Hermione looks sick with apprehension. 

“What do you mean, why?” Harry and Ron ask at the same time. “Voldemort is in the house!”

“But you said it’s safe, that he made an oath.”

Harry rubs a hand over his face. “Yes. He made an oath not to escape and not to kill me. _Me_. Not anyone else.”

“He’s wearing the inhibitors-”

“I have to go back,” Harry repeats, anxious to go in and make sure Voldemort didn’t sneak out the chimney or something, keen to get away from the worried looks his best friends are giving him. “I’ll be ok,” he says, trying to smile as he retreats.

It’s clear neither believe him, watching after him with something very much like horror.

(-)

Walburga is still shouting her head off when Harry locks the door behind him.

“FILTHY HALF-BLOOD!”

“Will you knock it out? Or at least try to come up with something more creative?” Harry barks at her. “This half-blood thing is getting old.”

“She wasn’t talking to you.”

Harry jumps, turning to see Voldemort beside the staircase.

“HOW DARE YOU DEFILE MY HOUSE-”

“You’ve aged terribly, I must say.” Voldemort replies, serenely.

Heart beating a mile a minute, Harry frowns. “You know each other?”

“MY ANCESTORS-”

“Went to school with her.”

 _Merlin, but he’s old!_ Though one wouldn’t be able to tell, looking at him. Seventy something means nothing for an immortal wizard. With the exceptions of a few very fine wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, and a small crease between his eyebrows, Voldemort doesn't look a day over thirty.

“But didn’t she like you? I mean she goes on all the time about dark shit and-”

“TRAVESTY, SHELTER FOR POOR, DIRTY ORPHANS-”

“Does she seem to like me?” Voldemort asks, one eyebrow raised.

Harry sighs. “Don’t mind her, batty old hag.” He goes towards the portrait. “Just help me drag the curtains over her.”

Harry takes hold on one side, but Voldemort only starts walking up the stairs.

“OY!” Harry yells after him.

“You have a wand, Potter. Learn to use it.”

“Why, thank you!” Harry spits.

“TAKE YOUR HANDS OF ME!”

“It doesn’t work. Don’t you think someone would have dealt with her, otherwise?”

Granted, Kreacher was very experienced in shutting her up, when she went off, with patient whispers, but Kreacher is not here, and nothing else works.

“Incompetent fools,” Voldemort sneers, peering at Harry over his shoulder.

“Yeah, _right_.” Harry snorts. “The whole Order came by-”

“Yes, the embodiment of competence,” he drawls, full of contempt.

“Dumbledore!" Even Voldemort wouldn't call the old Headmaster incompetent.

“He probably left her up to have a laugh at whatever wretched souls were living here at the time.”

“She’ll scream for hours if we don’t cover her!” Harry has to yell himself to cover her.

“I’ve suffered through worse torments during my life than some measly screams.”

(-)

A day passes, then two, then three, and nothing happens. Voldemort is virtually always in the library and Harry can’t be sure if he sleeps at all. 

_What a nerd_ , he thinks, with a hysterical laughter. 

Harry spends his days mostly spying on him, or resting in his room, answering two letters a day from Ron and Hermione, assuring them that yes, he’s still alive and no, he won’t be returning Voldemort to his cell.

He’d imagined living with a dark lord, especially with their history, would be…dramatic, to say the least. As it is, it is very, _very_ quiet. 

Quieter than it’s been before. Grimmauld always groaned and shifted around him, creaks and bangs into the walls that used to wake him up. 

It’s quiet now. Still. 

It’s waiting, as Harry, for Voldemort to do _something_. 

When Harry wakes on the fourth day, he finds Voldemort in the kitchen. 

“Err-” he says, shocked by the sight, frozen in the doorway. 

“How do you feed yourself?” Voldemort asks, looking through cupboards. He’s found another well fitting robe, it seems, black with strands of silver.

“My house-elf deals with it, usually.” 

“It’s not here.” 

“Well, no. Of course not. You have a bad track record with elves.” With everything, really. No one is safe to be around Voldemort. 

Except Harry.

_Are you, though? Are you really safe?_

Voldemort refused to say he won’t hurt him; and Harry’s been so angry, so eager to get him out of that cell, that he’d dismissed it. But it’s bothering him more and more, every time he thinks about it.

_What can he do, smash my head with a frying pan?_

“If you have no elf, and you refuse to leave the house, how will you eat?” 

Harry hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t thought about many things, really. 

Something whistles and Harry jumps, startled, clutching his wand. 

Voldemort gives him an amused look, before turning to take the kettle off the flame. 

Just a kettle. He stills his heart and puts his wand back in his pants. 

And then Voldemort makes himself _tea_. 

“You have no milk,” he says, displeased

Harry gawks at him. His shock turns into suspicion when he fills _two_ cups.

He leaves one on the table and then passes by Harry, leaving the room.

Harry isn’t stupid enough to drink it.

(-)

Sweating profusely, Harry dashes over the street.

 _Won’t take more than ten minutes_ , he thinks as he runs so fast, he has trouble stopping, barging into the Tesco located right at the corner of his house.

Some people give him suspicious looks.

Harry quickly fills a basket, with whatever he can find the fastest, head filled with awful scenarios of what might he find when he returns.

 _You know he can’t leave. He made an oath._ He can’t leave without Harry or his permission.

Still, it’s an exercise in paranoia, until he walks back through his front door; quietly, as to not wake Walburga again.

As Harry fills the pantry, it strikes him that he hadn’t asked Voldemort what he eats, usually. Harry’s rather convinced he won’t enjoy the crisps or the bags of sweets he had bought.

“Oh, well,” he tells himself. At least he got some milk and plenty of tea. Maybe he should have gotten cookies.

 _Yeah, right, dark lords and cookies._

Harry puts the rest of the groceries away before opening a chocolate bar and quickly shoving it in his mouth, starved.

(-)

Midas comes back with a note nine days after he’d left.

Harry scrambles out of his chair, heart wild.

He takes the note off Midas’ leg, with trembling fingers, tries to open it and is promptly cursed.

He yells in pain, dropping it, fumbling for his wand-

“So stupid,” Voldemort manifests beside him, though Harry hadn’t heard him approach. “Aren’t you in trouble? I’d go to St. Mungo’s, in your stead. That’s a quick acting curse. It will reach your heart in minutes.” 

“I want to read it,” Harry says, jaw locked. His fingers are already turning a deep shade of purple.

Voldemort sighs, bends and picks the piece of paper with no troubles. He opens it in Harrys’s sight. 

_Al Europe whelm._

That’s all it is.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Harry asks, his hand burning, reaching up his arm-

“I have not a single clue,” Voldemort says, glowering at the note, indeed looking perplexed. “I’ve no doubt I’ll figure it out.”

He folds it and puts it in his robe. “Hospital, Harry Potter.” 

(-)

He’s amazed when he returns, exhausted, to find Voldemort in the library. He knows he can’t escape; nevertheless, he’d been concerned for the three hours he’d spent in St. Mungo’s.

He only got away without Aurors getting called, because he’s Harry Potter.

 _“This is really dark magic, dear.”_ A kindly, elderly Healer had told him gently, but agreed to not make a big deal out of it.

“What is ‘Al Europe Whelm?’” Harry demands, crashing on the couch. His arm still tingles, as he was told it will for some time. 

“I will find out,” Voldemort replays, unbothered, not even looking at Harry.

“Where do you find all these robes?” Harry asks, because he’s certain there can’t be that many, in such excellent condition-

Another owl comes flying through the window, Daily Prophet tied to its legs. 

Harry groans, getting up, woozy. 

Rodolphus Lestrange had entered the Ministry Atrium, three hours before and had promptly killed himself.

 _Your services are no longer required._

“What kind of influence did you have on these people?” Harry wonders, gobsmacked. “To kill himself, over a few words-”

He clutches the newspaper, staring at Voldemort, who calmly turns the page of the book he is reading.

 **_Pure Lineage of the nineteen century._ **

“He was a loyal soldier.”

There’s no inflection in his tone, no sign of any feeling towards the death of a man that had given his life to him.

_Of course there is no feeling; remember who he is._

“It’s madness.” Harry whispers, shaking his head.

Voldemort finally looks up, fixes Harry with a glare.

“Says the boy who marched to his death because Dumbledore’s memory told him he must.” 

(-)

_I want to know how we can get rid of Dementors._

Harry puts away the letter from Kingsley, in which he’d thanked Harry, cordially, for Lestrange.

There’s a cup of tea at the table, had been waiting for Harry, still hot, when he’d entered the kitchen.

Harry ignores it.

He writes back that he’ll inquire about the Dementors and tells Kingsley about the letters exchanged between Voldemort and Lestrange, about “D” and “Al Europe Whelm.”

When he arrives in the doorway of the library, he sees Voldemort standing by the window.

There’s clear longing on his face, as he watches the outside world and Harry is forcefully reminded of the summer spent with bars at his windows, back at the Dursleys.

He thinks to retreat, he’ll come back later-

“What do you want, Potter?”

“Err,” Harry leans on the doorframe. “Kingsley would like to know how to get rid of Dementors.”

Voldemort makes a disdainful sound.

“What gives him the impression I will ever tell him anything else?”

Harry doesn’t answer.

“I got what I wanted. I am out of his clutches. He can spend three decades studying Dementors, in obscure libraries across the world, and he shall have his answers, then.”

Today he’s clad in a dark green robe, with silver cufflinks at the sleeves. He looks…better. He’s still pale, but after spending so many hours by the window, every day, it’s not as ghastly as how it’s been in the cell. The dark circles under his eyes are receding, though Harry can’t guess how, since he’s always in the library, reading.

“Well?” He turns to look at Harry. “Aren’t you going to threaten to take me back, unless I _cooperate_?”

Harry swallows. “No,” he says, simply.

Voldemort offers him an ominous smile.


	6. Chapter 6

Hermione doesn’t know what “Al Europe Whelm” means, either.

“A surge of all Europe? All Europe engulfed? All Europe buried?” she tries. “Perhaps it’s a sick slogan, for their stupid ‘revolution’.” 

“Sounds like it,” Ron makes a disgusted face. 

“He seemed honestly confused, when he read it,” Harry says, gently extracting his hair from Rose’s fist.

She giggles and tries to stand on his knee, her little face, with more freckles than ever, splitting into a grin.

She’s got another tooth since Harry last saw her.

“He is a good actor, let’s not forget,” Ron points out. 

“Besides, it could be just a thing Rodolphus came up with. Merlin knows he wasn’t the sanest man,” Hermione sighs, and bends to wipe some drool from her daughter’s chin. 

Harry knows it means something. Something that has to do with “D” and “D’s” whereabouts. 

Hermione can’t think what “D” stands for, either. 

Harry would like to stay more, but as the minutes trickle by, he gets that uneasy feeling again, so he hurries back to Grimmauld.

As always, Voldemort is in the library.

“Is that spit?” he asks, a curl to his mouth as he regards Harry.

Harry looks down and rubs at a wet spot on his shoulder. “Ahm,” he shrugs. “I saw a baby.” He explains.

Voldemort’s disgust increases.

The next morning, or rather mid day, as Harry is prone to fall asleep hours after he gets to bed and has a hard time waking in the morning, he not only finds the usual cup of tea waiting for him on the kitchen table, but buttered toast.

He frowns, suspicious. They look hot. Voldemort must have just made them. Harry leaves it untouched, making an omelette.

He should toss the toast in the bin and wash the dishes, only something inside him protests at throwing food.

It is no matter; as always, by the time he comes back to get dinner, the kitchen is sparkling clean.

(-)

“I missed you!” Teddy says, hugging Harry tight, ignoring the toys Harry just got him, preferring to stay tucked in his arms.

“I missed you, too,” Harry whispers back. “I’m sorry, I’ve been a bit busy.”

Andromeda watches him with hawk eyes. Harry hadn’t known her before the war, so he can’t be sure if she’d always been so intimidating and unsmiling.

They see each other rather frequently, but the woman keeps her comments short and almost all about Teddy.

“I found a cupboard, in Grimmauld,” Harry tells her, to cover the silence, when Teddy finally settles on the floor to unwrap his gifts. “I think it has pictures in it; I tried to open it, with Kreacher but it won’t.”

“In the drawing room, up on the third floor?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

Andromeda nods. “You won’t be able to open it. Unless you have Black blood or know Dark Magic.”

“What’s dark magic?” Teddy asks, looking up.

Harry pales a little-

“A branch of magic,” Andromeda answers, nonchalant. “If you’d like, I can give you a drop of blood-”

Harry shakes his head, stomach in knots. “No, no, that’s-” Blood magic _is_ dark magic. “It’s fine, thanks.”

He gives Teddy a pointed look, trying to signal to Andromeda that maybe he shouldn’t hear or understand is normal to use blood for anything, but she just dismisses him and returns to her knitting magazine.

When he goes back to his house, he climbs on the third floor, peering through the dirty glass. He’s positive he can see Sirius, on the top picture in a stack of photographs. Maybe it’s Regulus, he can’t be sure.

Kreacher had said they had looked identical, at that young age, and there is no way to determine unless he gets a better glimpse.

They’ve spent hours trying to open it; or rather, Harry did as Kreacher laughed every time Harry would fail, telling him it will not work.

Harry goes to the library, ignoring Voldemort’s surprised expression as he starts looking through the shelves.

“Err,” Harry stops between the rows of books after some minutes. He can’t say he’s been in the library often, before Voldemort, but he’s pretty sure it had been a mess, thousands of books everywhere. Hermione used to complain; she’d tried to deal with it, but half of the books would scream at her or try to eat her face, cursed against muggleborns.

Now it’s all organised. Alphabetically, by function and language.

There’s no dust on the shelves.

“My, my. You’re looking for a book, Potter?” Voldemort drawls. “Have you hit your head?”

“Shut it!” Harry barks, walking among the rows, peering at the titles. After five minutes, he sighs. “Something with locking charms and their counterspells?” he asks, uncertain.

Voldemort stands; his robe, another dark green one, makes him look even taller than he is. Harry thinks he might have gained a bit of weight. Or it’s just the cut, putting emphasis on his broad shoulders.

“For what, exactly?”

“I’m trying to open a cupboard,” Harry says, refusing to feel embarrassed by how easy it sounds.

“You tried Alohoromora?” Voldemort asks, mocking.

Harry just rolls his eyes.

Voldemort walks right past him, so close their robes touch. Harry backtracks, right into a shelf, his hand reaching for his wand, but Voldemort just moves past, without incident.

Blinking fast, he tries to calm himself. Granted, he isn’t expecting any sort of physical attack from Voldemort, he doesn’t look like the kind to brawl like muggles, but _still_.

Having him so close, even for a second, had made his heart beat faster, his skin grow hot.

“There you go.” Voldemort is back beside Harry, some seconds later, though he keeps more of a distance as he extends three volumes.

Harry takes them, mouth dry.

“If these fail you, you have others, on the right side.” Voldemort nods towards the last shelves. “But I doubt you’d approve of that kind of magic.”

Harry nods; he wouldn’t. “Someone told me I can only open it with Dark Magic, but I’m determined there are other ways.”

There always are other ways. It might mean more hard work, but it’s out there.

Harry goes to his room and opens the first book.

(-)

“What were you thinking?” Voldemort demands, pushing a newspaper in his face, as soon as Harry steps into the kitchen.

As usual, tea and toast wait for him. But for once Voldemort is there as well, looking displeased.

Lucius Malfoy has been photographed outside his house for the first time in years. The article reminds the public of all the man’s crimes and of his trial, in which he was acquitted, on Harry’s word. 

“I understand Narcissa. Maybe even that stupid boy. But Lucius?”

“Don’t you start as well!” Harry says, defensive. He’s gotten enough grief over it, form everyone. 

_He tried to have me killed!_ Ginny had pointed out before the trial.

Hermione had nodded, because she had been petrified by the basilisk that very same year, curtsy of the same diary Lucius snuck into Hogwarts.

“I require an explanation,” Voldemort goes on, when Harry tosses the paper aside and starts making his own tea.

“I don’t see why you’re so surprised!” He snaps. “After all, here I am, with you, of all people. Compared to that, letting Malfoy go free is nothing.” 

“You and I, are different.” 

Oh, how Harry knows.

“He was punished enough. He did time in Azkaban when he was caught in the Ministry, you terrorised him, sized his house, tortured his family. He learned his lesson.” 

Voldemort shakes his head. “No, he didn’t. Idiotic child.”

Truth is, Harry doesn’t care. He did it for Draco, for Narcissa. Both of them had saved his life-Draco at Malfoy Manor and Narcissa in the Forest. They helped put Voldemort away. Instrumental, really, what with Draco having had ownership of the Elder Wand.

Harry giving them a father, respectively a husband back, had seemed like fair repayment. 

“You are all naive, dithering idiots.”

“You’re just bitter because he abandoned you.” Harry shrugs, looking around for sugar, opening cabinets at random. 

“He abandoned me back in the first war, too. I always expected him to do it again. Slytherins do not remain loyal, without something in it for themselves.”

“Bellatrix and Rodolphus remained loyal.” Fanatical, actually. 

“They were special.” A brief break. “It’s on the top shelf, where sugar ought to stay.”

Indeed, Harry reaches up, and he finds it in a white jar, labeled in Voldemort’s elegant scrawl, right besides other jars that supposedly contain salt and pepper.

Harry remembers buying condiments at Tesco, but he doesn’t remember owning jars, nor had he ever needed them, when salts and sugar came in their own cans. But they are muggle cans and, apparently, not good or classy enough for the dark lord.

It’s weird. Voldemort turns out to be rather _domestic_. 

“Look, the man is basically a prisoner anyhow. This is the first time he leaves his house, he was too ashamed to show his mug-”

Voldemort laughs. “ _Ashamed_. Malfoy, ashamed. He testified against so many still free Death eaters at the time. He didn’t get out of his house because they’d have murdered him. The Manor is impenetrable. He was safe, there. And now Rodolphus is gone so he can walk around unconcerned.” 

“It doesn’t matter, yeah? If we can save a life, one family then so be it.”

Voldemort stares at him, hard.

Harry finds his tea bags on another shelf. “You went to school with his dad, no?” 

“Same year,” Voldemort confirms after a few seconds. 

_Merlin, he’s old_. It always shocks Harry when he remembers it.

“To give him credit, Lucius is far more willing to get his hands dirty than his father was. Abraxas was all good about shoving money at me and introducing me to people that would become my followers, but he nerver took the Mark. And when he found out his son did-he threw a fit.” 

Harry snorts. “I’m surprised he survived the first war.” He has a vague recollection of Abraxas dying sometime in his sixth year.

“You know, Harry, I do not kill everyone that I encounter, no matter how tempting it is.” 

Harry’s thrown off, because this is the first time in years the man uses just his given name. No Potter, no full name. Just Harry. His heart beats faster, suddenly. 

“If I would, there would be so few of us left.” 

(-)

“Bombarda!” Harry yells, incredibly frustrated, after reading for days and trying all the spells in the books. Nothing worked.

Harry knows it was a bad idea as soon as the spell leaves his wand.

Indeed, it rebounds, leaving the cupboard intact. He barely has the time to shield himself. The spell doesn’t shatter him to pieces, because of it, but it throws him on his back.

“Fuck!” he swears, rubbing his head.

“Pathetic.”

Harry jumps to his feet and turns, sharply, to see Voldemort leaning on the doorframe.

Cheeks flaming, Harry gives him a nasty look. “You were defeated by a baby, so maybe you shouldn’t talk.” He says through gritted teeth.

Voldemort ignores it, moving past Harry to inspect the cupboard.

“At least five spells come to mind that would open it,” he says, contemptuous.

“I’m not using Dark Magic,” Harry shoots back.

“I wasn’t talking about Dark Magic.”

Harry sighs. He should give up. But the promise of seeing something new with Sirius is too tempting.

“Fine, I’ll bite. Tell me.”

Voldemort raises an eyebrow. “I think not. You clearly lack the intellect to understand such spells, if you go around castingexploding charms at an indestructible object.”

“Go fu-”

“However,” Voldemort says sharply. “I can open it for you.”

“Yeah, right. I’m not giving you my wand. I’m not that stupid.”

Kingsley had warned him to never allow Voldemort close to his wand; the small amount of magic that the suppressors didn’t completely block is insignificant, but could become more stable with a conduit.

_In normal folks, a wand makes no difference, but he isn’t normal. In normal folk, the inhibitors suppress all magic, but some lingers around him, anyway._

“Oh, you _are_ that stupid,” Voldemort says with a ferocious smile. “As it is, I don’t need a wand to open it.”

Harry goes to stand at his side. “No? So how exactly-”

Voldemort hisses.

At first, Harry thinks it’s out of frustration or anger but then, with a pang, he understands.

The clasps on the cupboard are made of silver snakes. They move, coming out of the loops with a soft noise.

Parseltongue. Harry looks at Voldemort, shocked.

_Is this how I used to sound? No wonder Justin and half the school thought me evil._

It sounds threatening. Ominous.

Inexplicably, Harry feels pain, deep in his chest, at having lost the ability, along with the Horcrux.

Voldemort smirks, a smug expression on his face. His long fingers close around the handle, also made in the shape of a snake, and the dusty glass door opens.

Harry grabs the stacks of photographs at the top.

A four, five-year-old boy smiles and winks mischievously at him, on top of a child broom. Harry knows it’s Sirius, just by his expression.

Teddy could be his son, really, they resemble each other to an incredible degree.

He gathers all the many albums stacked in the shelves with shaking hands.

“Thanks,” he stays, stopping briefly, before he leaves the room.

(-)

Harry doesn’t understand what had happened with the Black family- Sirius looks so happy, as a child, in all his pictures at that age. It’s Regulus that is shyer, less likely to smile.

Dozen upon dozens of pictures with them, along with generations of Blacks. Harry shoves those aside, fast, looking for his godfather, so full of emotions he doesn’t even care Voldemort is seated on the other side of the table.

Once Sirius had started Hogwarts, the pictures with him are rarer. His smiles more vicious smirks than genuine merriment.

The last he finds, Sirius must have been around sixteen, tall and broad shouldered, looking striking in his expensive robes. He isn’t smiling, a blank expression on his face and fire in his eyes.

He looks very handsome and Harry blushes, ashamed. _He was your godfather! Get it together!_

Harry had long before realised he has an appreciation for tall, dark men.

He realised it in the tent, with the locket dangling around his throat as he slept-

Harry shakes his head and looks up at Voldemort, who had been strangely quiet, no mocking words for Harry and how much he evidently treasures this pictures of the only family he had had, of the only adult in Harry’s life he had felt he could depend on.

But Voldemort isn’t even looking at him; he’s glancing down at some of the pictures Harry had discarded.

Harry peeks over, leaning in.

Bellatrix Black had been gorgeous, no matter how much it pains him to recognise it. She looks as proud as she had been in life, long, thick shiny hair falling in her very dark, alluring eyes.

There are dozens of pictures with her as well; Harry recognises Andromeda and Narcissa in some of them.

Strangely, the one that Voldemort is staring at, held loosely between his fingers, is with Bellatrix as a very young child, Kreacher running after her, in and out of the frame, trying to take away a wand she must have stolen from her parents.

“Where is she buried?” Voldemort asks, voice low.

That always means danger with him. When he’s most angry, Voldemort’s voice drops instead of rising. “Or did they burn her?”

The Ministry burned most of the Death Eaters bodies, when no family came forward to claim them.

They hadn’t wanted to release Bellatrix to Narcissa, Harry knows. Narcissa had been a pariah, son and husband awaiting trial, in Azkaban.

But Andromeda, mother of a heroine, could not be denied. People had whispered, confused about her request, claiming the body of the woman that had killed her daughter, but no one dared say no to her.

“Why do you care?” Harry asks in a whisper.

“How insensitive,” Voldemort says, glaring at Harry. “And you called me callous, for not caring about your dead parents.”

“But you didn’t care about her,” Harry insists. “You don’t care about anyone.”

“Is that so? How do you know?” Voldemort’s face is blank, but his eyes flash. For a second, Harry imagines he can see a spark of red in them. “Oh, wait, let me guess: Dumbledore told you.”

Well, yes. But Harry’s seen it for himself, the way he treated his Death Eaters and-

“He must be right; after all, he was _omniscient_.” It would be hard to miss the fury in Voldemort’s voice.

“He was,” Harry defends Dumbledore, though he has his issues with him, still. “You never showed-” 

“Where is she? What have they done to her?” Voldemort hisses.

Harry bites his cheek, eyes falling on the young Bellatrix, laughing as she sets the curtains on fire.

“She’s buried at Malfoy Manor.”

Voldemort’s face twists into a snarl.

(-)

Harry is melting. It’s one of those days, when Grimmauld’s weather charms just decide not to work.

Harry tried to alter them, had read more books than he’d ever wanted, including Ancient Runes, but nothing works in the damned house.

It is hot. August at its worst.

When Harry goes down to the kitchen, the coolest room in the house, he finds a cold tea waiting for him, instead of the usual hot ones.

It’s starting to bug Harry, the whole breakfast thing. What is Voldemort playing at?

At noon, it’s almost unbearable to be in the house; Harry’s sweating, just in T-shit and jeans, and he thinks to go to Ron’s, to cool down.

But then he thinks of Voldemort, trapped here, in this heat.

Harry goes looking for him, guessing correctly he’ll find him in the damned library.

It’s even worse there, the only room with tall, wide windows, the sun shining through them. And Voldemort is clad in the black robe, the one with silver accents. It looks very thick.

Harry doesn’t know how the man isn’t sweating; he’s possibly _too elegant_ for it, or something, but he does look irritated, giving Harry a hateful glare as soon as he enters.

“Why don’t you go down in the kitchen?” Harry asks. “It’s cooler down there.”

“I don’t read in the kitchen,” Voldemort says.

“Why not?” Harry frowns.

“Because the kitchen is for eating; it is no place for books.”

It’s such a Hermione thing to say; he wouldn’t have thought she’d have anything in common with Voldemort, but they share an unhealthy respect for books.

“That’s nonsense,” he says.

“You lack discipline.”

“Well, guess I didn’t have parents to teach me these things!” Harry barks.

Voldemort is not impressed. “Neither did I,” he reminds Harry. “And yet, I still posses manners.”

“Oh, yes. What a gentleman, killing and torturing your way around the country.”

“Suit yourself. If you’d have a routine, if you’d discipline yourself, you wouldn’t struggle so much, mentally.”

Harry can feel his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. “ _What?_ ”

Voldemort is done talking, plainly, because he turns back to his book and ignores Harry.

But Harry can’t let it go. The _nerve_ on this man-

“If anyone here has mental issues, that would be you,” He tells him. “You’re monstrous and psychotic!” Harry says, pacing around. His T-shirt is stuck to his back, wet. “And this?” He gestures around the library, with all the books arranged, scrolls of parchment carefully stacked besides ink-pots and quills. “This isn’t discipline! This is- I don’t even know what it is, but it’s _strange_! I can’t find one damn thing in the pantry!”

It’s all so clean and organised. It freaks Harry out, trying to imagine Voldemort cleaning cabinets or making breakfast, sorting tea bags by flavour. Ridiculous.

“You’ll get used to it.” Voldemort drawls, slowly turning the page.

“It’s my house!” Harry points out. “You should get used to how I do things.”

“You don’t do _anything_.” Voldemort says, still calm. “You’ve been rotting in this house, in chaos and misery.”

Voldemort is too calm. Harry’s lingering on the edge, waiting for something terrible to happen.

His stillness makes Harry think of a snake, patiently stalking its prey, waiting for the perfect chance to strike.

“And what’s the deal with the tea, huh? Why are you making me toast?”

“It’s the polite thing to do, after you so _graciously_ received me in your house.”

“Spare me!” Harry says, voice embarrassingly high. “You’re trying to poison me!”

Voldemort sighs, as if he’s dealing with a particularly unreasonable child. As if he hadn’t tried to kill Harry for the best part of a decade. He looks up.

“Aren’t you paranoid?” he asks. “Poison you with what, exactly?”

“I don’t know! You can clearly open stuff that the Aurors, Kreacher and myself hadn’t been able to. Who knows what’s hidden in this shithole!”

That’s how he gets his robes, Harry thinks. He found armoires with snakes on them and commanded them to open.

“Are you quite done?” Voldemort demands. “My patience is not without limits, Harry Potter.”

Back to Harry Potter.

_Good. That’s good. You don’t want him calling you Harry, as if you are friends. He doesn’t deserve to call you Harry._

“You’ll just have to suffer it,” He says, spiteful.

A muscles jumps in Voldemort’s jaw. “I thought you said I wouldn’t be tortured here. Throwing a tantrum is not only embarrassing, but it is quite torturous.”

Harry takes in a big breath, shuts his mouth and leaves, before he can continue to act foolish.

It’s the heat, he thinks. It’s getting to him.

He goes to Ron.

Voldemort can go ahead and melt, for all Harry cares.

(-)

The next day is just as bad.

After a cold shower, he goes down to the kitchen, to find Voldemort already there, sitting at the table, drinking water from a tall goblet, engraved with the Black crest. Harry has no idea where that came from either, had asked Kreacher to use a nice, normal muggle set Hermione had bought when she used to live with him.

Harry’s tea and toast are waiting. He groans.

“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that,” he says, defeated.

“I am,” Voldemort confirms. “So you might as well just eat. We both know you will, eventually. You always do what I want you to, even if it might take a while.”

“You’re delusional, sometimes.” Harry says, getting a jug of pumpkin juice from the pantry, that he’d bought just days prior. “Most of the time.”

“We shall see.”

Harry could just go back to his room, or to the living room or to Ron’s. He could visit Teddy.

He sits across Voldemort.

“You’re sitting in Sirius’ chair,” he says, mildly. “I’d rather you not.”

“I rather not be here at all, I assure you,” Voldemort replies.

Harry sighs.

_You can’t let him get to you. He’s just doing and saying these things to rile you up. Just don’t react._

“I’ll get you some clothes,” he says. “I know you must be hot.”

Voldemort is in his care, as absurd as that sounds, and Harry should remember that. He gets no pleasure thinking the man is uncomfortable.

“It was hot, back at the orphanage.” Voldemort responds. “There were no cooling charms there, either. I trained my mind to ignore it. The heat, the cold, the hunger. Nothing bothers Lord Voldemort.”

It’s so fascinating when he starts referring to himself in the third person. When Harry had told Hermione about it, she’d said it’s most likely a way for him to dissociate himself from certain parts of his past.

“The incessant wailing of children, the sirens in the war. If you think this is hot, you haven’t been locked in a bunker, with fifty other people, for hours on end.”

Harry winces. He can’t imagine it. _The war_. He doesn’t know anyone else that had lived through that. Tom Riddle had; he’d lived through the World War as a muggle, every summer, starting his second year at Hogwarts and all the way until his last.

He looks at the man in front of him, made of pride and spite, and he can’t see the child he once was.

And yet he’d seen that child in Dumbledore’s memory.

“You were creepy back then, too,” Harry says. “Violent. You killed animals.”

This is _Voldemort_. Harry can’t forget that, can’t let his empathy blind him.

“I beg your pardon?” Voldemort raises an eyebrow.

“Billy’s rabbit. Mrs. Cole said so, to Dumbledore.”

“Ah. The stupid rabbit,” Voldemort says, but he smiles, slightly. “No wonder Dumbledore hated me; I never knew that woman had already filled his head with her tale of woe before he even met me.” A brief pause. “Did he tell you he set my belongings on fire?”

Harry smirks. “Yeah. Because they weren’t your belongings, were they?”

Voldemort rolls his eyes. “We were all thieves there. We were poor. We stole from the streets and from each other. Food, toys, books. Whoever was too weak to do so, died, carried away by the pox, bodies too malnourished to survive. So we did what we had to do. The older ones stole from the youngest. The smart from the stupid. It’s not my fault I had magic and was far more intelligent than the rest. We were all vicious. I stole Billy’s breakfast, so he threw away my book. I pushed him down the stairs and his older friends broke my nose. I killed his rabbit, and they left me alone.”

Harry suppresses a shiver. He remembers Vernon threatening Harry with orphanages, when he misbehaved. And even Harry had known orphanages were terrible, even if he’d never seen one, even if he’d been only six years old.

But everyone seemed to know, a consensus of sorts, that those places were terrible. Hermione says they did away with them, that they have another system in place now, for orphans.

“I only had Dudley to steal my food,” Harry says. “Granted, they didn’t give me much, anyway.”

“You never fought back?” Voldemort looks at Harry, curious.

“No.” It would have only landed him in worse trouble.

Voldemort had chosen to have the others notice him, see him as stronger than them. He had used his magic to punish.

Harry had chosen to become unobtrusive, did his best to be invisible to the Dursleys. He used his magic to help him run and hide, when Dudley wanted to harm him.

“You wouldn’t have survived at Wool’s,” comes Voldemort’s verdict after a few seconds. “We’d have eaten you alive.”

“I’m sorry you had to grow up like that,” Harry says, honestly.

Harry can acknowledge the terrible person Voldemort is, but he can be sorry for the boy he once was.

Voldemort doesn’t appreciate pity or sympathy.

“Don’t get sentimental, Potter,” He spits. “Weren’t you raised in a cupboard?”

Rita had gotten hold of that gem when she’d talked to the Dursleys and now everyone and their mothers knew it.

Harry takes a big gulp of pumpkin juice.

“You called me monstrous, the other day. Weren’t the Dursley monstrous? I only tried to kill you, fast and clean. But who starves a child? What kind of people shove a baby in a closet, hmm?” he asks, cruel. “And speaking of sadistic bastards, didn’t Dumbledore send you back to them every summer, the same way he sent me back to a war torn London?”

Harry stands and leaves.

(-)

_This isn’t such a big deal, get a grip!_ Harry tells himself when he enters the forth muggle clothing store. _Just pick something and get out!_

Only, Voldemort will hate the clothes anyway, what with them being muggle.

Harry refuses to go to Madam Malkin and be seen buying summer robes for a tall man. He’ll never hear the end of it, and Rita Skeeter will write about his mysterious lover for at least two years.

So at least he should buy something fancy, to satisfy the snob in Voldemort. Something tells Harry, Voldemort would rather melt than wear jeans and T-shirts, or Merlin forbid, _shorts_.

“How may I help you?” A young man about his age asks Harry, smiling large. “Would you like a glass of water, or a coffee, while you decide?”

Right, it’s _that_ kind of store. Certainly not a treatment he’d receive at Primark.

“Err,” Harry feels very out of place in his jeans and sneakers. The floor is cleaner than his shoes. “I’m looking for a-present. For a man.” He clarifies dumbly, since he’s already in the men’s section.

“Of course. A certain article or-?”

“Ahm, yeah. I mean, no. That is to say, a whole thing. Outfit. More than one.”

“I see,” the man agrees, pleasantly.

“I don’t have measurements,” Harry says, more and more uncomfortable. “He’s tall.” He adds. “And- yeah. He’s tall. About -like this.” He raises his hand some dozen inches over his head.

Charles, as his name-tag suggests, blinks at him.

“I’m afraid we need a bit more than that, sir.”

Harry looks around, wildly. There are plenty of posters hanging around the place, men modelling various outfits.

“He looks like that one.” Harry points to an attractive brunette. It’s not like that’s his criteria for Voldemort. All the models are attractive, that one just happens to be tall and slender, but with broad shoulders. 

Charles looks at the poster. “Oh, lucky you.” He whispers and Harry’s cheeks burn.

He’s unsure what to comment. Vernon had hated “homosexuals” more than magic, and Harry remembers many muggles shared his opinions. Maybe times have changed.

“He’s not-ahm- no, I mean- Yeah. He’s about that size. It’s fine if he isn’t. I can-ah- tweak them.”

“We have our own tailors, sir. If they don’t fit, you may return them for adjustments.”

“Sure.” Harry nods, but he’ll use his wand if it comes to it.

Though he can’t see how that conversation between him and Voldemort would go.

His cheeks burn again.

It’s torturous. In the end, Harry stops Charles from showing him various shirts and trousers. “Look, just pick whatever you want. I trust you. Just make it fancy and nice.”

Charles is thrilled with Harry. No wonder, judging by the prices. Harry will have to confound them into accepting cash, because he doesn’t have one of those card thingies muggle store seem to request, after a certain threshold.

“Are you interested in underwear?” Charles asks, conspiratorially, just as Harry thought they were done.

_Oh, fuck._

No, Harry isn’t interested. He can’t. Surely, Voldemort would murder him, somehow, if Harry presents him with underwear.

_But he must need it, right?_

“Ok,” Harry whispers, faint. “No, no. No!” He adds, when Charles shows him some ridiculously over the top underpants. “Just -normal. Don’t you have normal stuff? Please?”

“Are you sure? These are very nice,” Charles winks, holding some red boxers made of silk.

Harry’s knees go weak. “I’m very sure. He hates red. He’s a green kind of guy,” he rambles.

“We have them in a nice, dark forest green-”

“No- please!”

He must look tortured because Charles leaves him alone after that.

(-)

He leaves the many bags at Voldemort’s door, swiftly, and then hides in his room for the rest of the day.

 _Why are you acting like a child? You’ve done nothing shameful. It’s a necessity._

He dreams of the locket Horcrux, of Tom, wearing the silk red boxers, in the tent of horrors.

He wakes up drenched, and it has little to do with the persisting stifling heat.

(-)

Voldemort is wearing a light white shirt and black trousers. They fit him perfectly. _Criminally_ , really.

_Don’t stare. Ignore it._

Especially ignore the smirk on his face.

Harry’s so distracted, trying to do anything to ignore the awkwardness, that he only realises he has a piece of the suspicious toast - waiting for him, as always- in his hand when it touches his lips.

He hastily drops it back onto the plate, as if burned.

Voldemort’s suddenly very close to him.

Harry reaches for his wand under the table.

But Voldemort just grabs the toast.

Harry looks up, just in time to see Voldemort take a bite out of it. He chews it, slowly.

“You’re a fool, Harry Potter.” He says, after he swallows, sounding more amused than ever, and very, very pleased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you wanted to read more about day to day weird interactions between Harry and Voldemort, so this chapter is just that. Not much plot happening, and it gets a bit silly, but we will be back on track with the next chapter.


	7. Chapter 7

“You really should do something with yourself. Find a career. You are young and you are wasting away in this house. All your friends work, do they not?” 

Voldemort is standing between two bookshelves, examining the titles.

Harry’s been pretending to read, for lack of anything else to do.

 _Voldemort really loves books_ , Harry thinks. _He should have been a librarian._

He stifles the laugh that tries to rise at the image his mind provides.

_Well, he’d be better to look upon than Mrs. Pince, that’s for sure._

“I’m keeping an eye on you,” Harry says, ignoring the twisted ideas that come to him, on occasion.

“A poor excuse. I’ve been living here for two months. You’ve been out of work for years. Is there nothing you’d like to do?”

“I always wanted to be an Auror,” Harry answers, after a moment. 

“A terrible choice.” Voldemort glances at him, entertained.

Harry nods. An Auror that cannot kill the Dark Lord, chooses instead to take him home and buy him designer clothes…

“It was Crouch, you know?” Harry says. “That made me want to be one. The Death Eater, I mean, not the dad.”

“Barty always had a way with children,” Voldemort says, switching two books between themselves.

“What were you thinking, with that ridiculous plan?” Harry asks him, remembering the disaster. “There were so many easier ways to snatch me or get my blood-”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Voldemort raises an eyebrow, turning to face Harry, fully.

“Maybe. But it was so convoluted.”

“You shouldn’t complain. I made you the winner of a prestigious international competition; you’d have never passed the first task, on your own. Yet another thing you would have never accomplished without me. Amusing, how they keep adding up.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Harry waves it away, desensitised already to being put down at any chance Voldemort gets.

It’s also true; “Moody” was the one that made it easy for Harry to go through the tasks; without him, he’d have faced a dragon, with no prior knowledge; without him, he’d have drowned.

That brings him too close to the third task, to Cedric, and Voldemort rising from the cauldron, so Harry changes the subject, before the ache in his chest starts spreading.

“I hate the Ministry, so getting a job with them is out of the question. They must hate me back, now, what with …ahm, the circumstances.”

He never gets along with Ministers, it seems. It’s his destiny to fight with the magical leaders over Voldemort.

“Yes. Blackmailing people leads to hard feelings, Harry,” Voldemort says, condescending.

Harry opens his mouth, but before he can answer back with some choice words, Voldemort goes on. “What else? There must be something you enjoy, besides moping around the kitchen or staring at me all day long.”

Harry looks away, mortified. “I’m keeping an eye on you,” he repeats. “I don’t enjoy it.”

Voldemort hums and turns to his books, adjusting them until they are perfectly aligned.

“I guess I’d like to play Quidditch. Maybe,” Harry speaks into the silence, just to say something.

“Then go and chase balls, if that is what you desire.” 

“Well, I can’t because-”

“I can’t escape. If I could, I’d have been out already. Merlin knows, you give me plenty of opportunities.”

(-)

“It went great, Harry! You were brilliant!” Ginny hugs him when Harry gets out of the locker room, back in his street clothes.

She’s been flying with Puddlemere United for over a year, since she’d left the Holyhead Harpies; between her and Oliver Wood, their Captain had been happy to meet with Harry.

His reflexes are just as good as they used to be, even if he hadn’t played in a very long time, outside the rare friendly matches at the Burrow.

“I’m so excited!” she says, throwing her long hair over her shoulder.

“Me too,” Harry grins.

He’d missed flying. He’s been worried, as he always is when he has to meet new people that gawk at his scar, with worship in their eyes; it always makes him angry and uncomfortable.

But the team was more impressed by Harry’s flying than anything Voldemort related, and Harry is alright with that.

It’s different to be appreciated for his talent, unlike for the lie that he saved everyone from the dark lord.

The dark lord who’s waiting for him back at the house.

“It went alright,” Harry announces, though Voldemort doesn’t ask. “I’ve made the team.”

“Shocking,” he drawls, turning the page of a journal he’d been scribbling furiously in.

“I’m a great flyer!” Harry says through gritted teeth.

One of the many reasons he hadn’t gotten a job was precisely because everyone would just assume he got it because of his name.

“I’m not a Quidditch fan, so I shall take your word for it.”

“ _Shocking_ ,” Harry spits back at him. But he’s too happy, for once, to be bitter. “It will be nice to play again,” he says, though he doesn’t know why he insists on sharing these emotions with Voldemort.

He can just wait for Ron to finish his shift at Weaslys’ Wizard Wheezes and say it to him. Ron will actually be happy to hear it.

“What team?” Voldemort asks, sighing, when Harry doesn’t shut up, looking up from his journal and putting the quill down.

“Puddlemere United.”

“Ah,” Voldemort gets a glint in his eyes. “Ginevra is with them, no?”

“How in the world would you even-”

“Witch Weekly.”

“Perhaps I should get you a subscription,” Harry mocks. “You seemed to have enjoyed it. They also share recipes, maybe you’ll learn to make more than toast, for breakfast.”

Voldemort’s smile only grows more predatory. “If you’d like something else, you only need to say so, Harry. But I happen to know you enjoy toast, slightly burned and with far too much butter.”

“How-”

“I have eyes. Unlike others,” he gives Harry a pointed glare, “I actually use them to observe what is happening around me.”

Harry’s skin flushes, imagining Voldemort watching Harry.

 _He’s only doing it to find your weak spots_.

Maybe that’s what he’s writing down, a list of all the ways he can use to destroy Harry.

“I won’t let you upset me today,” Harry declares.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Merlin, no,” Harry runs a hand through his hair, more messy than usual, from flying. “Just drop it.”

“You are unusually cheery,” Voldemort leans back into the chair. “Is it Quidditch or is it Ginevra? I did read she is quite a heartless young woman, abandoning the poor national hero, leaving him broken and refusing to leave his house-”

“I hate Skeeter,” Harry mumbles, remembering the articles.

Good thing Ginny is made of tough stuff and she ignored all the hate filled letters from Harry’s fans, every glare she received in public, for months after the breakup.

Harry had offered they go out together, from time to time, so the idiots could see he has no hard feelings towards her.

But she had refused, so close after the separation, had said it would mess her up.

Not that it would have been nice for Harry.

It took almost a year for him to be able to see her at the Burrow, without his heart aching.

He’d tried to stop going, but Molly wouldn’t hear of it.

_“I’ll tell her to stay away while you’re here.” She had said, patting Harry’s back._

_“She’s your daughter,” Harry had said, flabbergasted._

_“I love her to bits, but she was the one to break your heart. Besides, I see her every day.”_

Harry is very happy all that awkwardness and heart ache had went away, though Ginny still doesn’t bring her boyfriend over, in the Sundays he visits the Weasleys.

“I’m going out,” Harry announces. “So you can return to your ramblings or whatever it is you’re writing.”

“Thank you for your _permission_ , Harry,” Voldemort's smile gets a tenser line to it and Harry retreats before it grows worse. 

He takes a quick shower, grinning to himself the whole time, imagining Ron’s reaction.

He’ll just surprise him at the store. Better that way; if he waits until Ron is home, Hermione will be there and she’ll have much the same reaction as Voldemort.

Oh, she’d try to smile and congratulate him. Maybe she’d even be pleased that Harry is finally doing something, but deep down she’ll think he can do better, as she still thinks of Ron’s job.

He checks the pantry, before he leaves, to make sure Voldemort has something to eat. It’s been almost a week since he’s gone shopping.

 _Perhaps I’ll get something from Diagon_ , he thinks, so cheerful, he feels generous. Something magical, that he’ll like more.

Though Voldemort seems to enjoy muggle food well enough. In the first two weeks he’d only eaten a little- toast and fruits; presumably because he hadn’t eaten anything in years and his stomach couldn’t handle more, but recently, every day the pantry is emptying at an alarming speed.

Especially the meat.

 _A true carnivore, this one._

“My, my. You showered.”

Harry jumps, hitting his head on the low pantry ceiling.

“Can you make some noise, when you move?” He asks, sharply.

“No. I relish in seeing your alarmed face.”

Harry rolls his eyes, stepping back into the kitchen. “What do you mean, I showered? I shower daily.”

It’s not exactly true, Harry’s skipped some days, mostly in the beginning of their cohabitation, because really, who wants to be naked and vulnerable with Voldemort around?

He’s placed strong locking charms on his door, and he keeps his wand in his teeth as he showers, but even so, he always tries to be done as fast as possible.

“Perhaps,” Voldemort tilts his head. “But you never attempt to tame that messy mop you call hair; not that you’d succeeded now, but you tried.” He smirks. “Are you going on a romantic outing?”

“Oh, God. You just-agh!” Harry waves a hand. “I’m leaving.”

“I thought you wouldn’t let me upset you today, Harry.”

Voldemort’s amused voice floats after Harry, as he climbs the stairs to the foyer.

(-)

Training is hard; harder than it’s been at Hogwarts. Harry’s a bit out of shape, but he always sleeps better afterwards, so tired his nightly terrors and worries melt away, as he goes out like a light.

Of course, there are articles about him as soon as word gets out; not just the Witch Weekly, but even the Daily Prophet.

Apparently there is already a love triangle happening between him, Ginny and her boyfriend, Yannis, one of the Beaters. Either that, or they’re fighting over her affection.

It makes Voldemort laugh when Harry glances at these articles. He’s gotten into the habit of reading them out loud, just to piss Harry off.

He retaliates by not buying some of the things Voldemort writes down on The List.

Because he’s leaving Harry lists now; every few days, when Harry goes down for breakfast, beside the ever present tea and toast, Harry finds a groceries list.

He’s never even heard of some of the things on it; for an orphan raised in poverty, Voldemort has expensive taste. Harry has to go further than the Tesco at the corner to get some of the specific kind of foodstuffs.

There’s no ‘thank you’ afterward, not even an acknowledgment at first.

And then Harry starts finding dinner waiting for him; it’s always something extravagant that smells heavenly.

“Stop it,” Harry barges into the library, after the third time it happenes. “You’re wasteful. I don’t like throwing food away.”

“Than _you_ are being wasteful,” Voldemort replies, uninterested. 

_Fine_ , Harry thinks. _Fine. Two can play this game._

(-)

“I’ve made dinner,” Harry announces one evening.

“Good for you.”

“I meant for you, too,” Harry spits and marches back to the kitchen.

Part of him doesn’t expect Voldemort to join him, but he does minutes later.

He’s wearing the clothes Harry bought for him, but with an open robe over them, unclasped.

It’s getting chilly outside, as October rolls around.

Voldemort sits and only then it strikes Harry, that he had left Sirius’s chair, at the head of the table, free for his _guest_.

_Why did I do that?_

“I believe it is you that is trying to poison me,” Voldemort looks down at his plate. “Not intentionally, of course, not with your delicate nature, but surely this has the potential to make me sick.”

Harry squeezes his knife harder, ignores the desire to shove it between Voldemort’s eyes, and cuts his steak.

“I know how to cook,” he says, with his mouth full, because he just knows it will upset Voldemort’s sense of propriety. “The Dursleys expected everything to taste good.”

“Ah, so you can add House-Elf on your very short resume,” Voldemort smirks.

“Right under ‘Defeater of Voldemort’,” Harry responds with a smirk of his own.

“That would be a lie,” Voldemort takes a bite and Harry expects him to make a face or say something unflattering, but surprisingly he just chews and swallows. “Now, why didn’t you poison _them_?”

“You know why,” Harry answers.

“Yes, killing is wrong.” Voldemort does make a face at that. “I’m not saying murder, but just some food poisoning.”

Harry sighs and ignores him.

“Tell me you at least spat in it.”

Harry chokes with his beans.

It takes him minutes to recover and two glasses of water.

Eating with Voldemort is bad for his health, even if Harry’s the one cooking.

(-)

“Thank you,” Andromeda says, taking the pictures Harry had brought over.

She’s as stoic as ever, no expression on her face as she looks at them, but there’s something unusually soft in her eyes.

“You’re welcome.”

Teddy is terribly excited. “That’s Cissa!” He asserts, and Harry makes sure his face betrays nothing. He knows “Cissa” visits occasionally.

“And that’s you, Nana.”

“This is -was-Sirius.” Harry points him out. “And his brother, Regulus. You look a lot like them.”

Not at the moment; Teddy’s hair is blue, and his eyes bright green, as they tend to be, whenever he sees Harry.

“And who is this?” He asks, pointing at Bellatrix and Harry’s heart skips a bit. “She’s pretty.”

Silence falls. Harry thinks to distract Teddy, with talk of Quidditch-

“Is she Bella, nana? You always say she looked like you the most.”

 _Surely not_ , Harry thinks. Surely Andromeda isn’t telling Teddy anything about _Bella_.

“Yes, that’s her.”

Andromeda sounds tortured.

 _What a fucked up position to be in_ , Harry thinks, with sympathy, even if he doesn’t understand at all.

“Don’t be sad, nana. Don’t be! Look!”

Teddy’s short blue hair turns black and glossy, grows long, down to his waist; his eyes turn dark with long eyelashes.

Thing is, Teddy looks like Sirius and he supposes Bellatrix, without having to shift. He favours Sirius more, with steely grey eyes, but the Black features are dominant, no trace of Remus or Ted Tonks in him.

Andromeda puts herself together, incredibly fast, a vestige of her upbringing, Harry imagines, of her Slytherin House and how they all know to hide their feelings when needed.

“I’m not sad,” she lies convincingly enough for an almost five-year-old. “And hair that long is for girls.”

“Nah!” Teddy smiles. “I’ve seen some rock singers on the telly, at Johnny’s house and they have long hair.”

“Those are Muggles, love.”

“Lucius isn’t a muggle! He has long hair.”

“What?” Harry splutters.

“Not that long.” Andromeda sends Harry a glare.

“ _Lucius?_ ”

“Oh,” Teddy looks up, hair shorter, blond, eyes green. “Cissa’s husband.”

“He knows who Lucius is. Go draw Harry a golden snitch, yes?”

Harry paces around the room until Teddy is persuaded to leave.

“Malfoy?” He hisses in a low voice. “I get your sister, but Malfoy? He hates half-bloods and werewolves, and he fought against Teddy’s parents-”

“He is all that, but he loves Narcissa. If it makes her happy to have me and Teddy visit, then he’ll allow it, and allow it with a polite smile.”

“You’re going to the Manor?” Harry forgets to keep his voice low. “People were killed in that cellar-

“You’ll be happy to know they don’t receive us in the cellar,” she says, contemptuous.

“ _Well_ , they torture Hermione is a living room-”

“I’ll make sure to ask witch one, so we can avoid it,” Andromeda drawls.

Harry blinks at her, trying to keep his temper. He gives her a derisive laugh.

“And you won’t let me take Teddy to the Burrow? Why, have you changed your views? Aren’t they posh enough? Too poor for your-”

“ _She_ killed my sister,” the venom in her voice takes Harry by surprise.

He’d forgotten it; Molly is the most caring, kind woman he ever had the fortune to meet. It’s hard to remember she took down one of the most evil beings in the world.

“Your sister was about to kill her daughter,” Harry spits. “Your sister killed-” Harry shuts his mouth, but his eyes go to Dora’s pictures. They are everywhere, all over the house, a veritable shrine.

“I understand,” Andromeda says, stiffly. “I do. But she killed my sister.”

“I don’t get you.” Harry looks at her, dumbfounded. “I truly don’t. She was a murderer, rotten to the core and-”

“You’ve no business to ‘get me’. I’ve known Bella since before you were born! I’ve known her long before that monster turned her into- into what she became. Do you think it’s easy for me? I could strangle her myself if she were to stand before me today; but I have years upon years of memories with a beautiful girl, that took care of me, that solved all my problems and protected me from the world. I’m mourning that girl, and you have no right to judge me!

We were fine in the first war! Death Eaters were killing blood traitors, right and left. And I was the biggest traitor of all, a Black married to a Muggleborn. I wasn’t touched. Ted wasn’t touched. He never understood why, but I knew she was keeping them away from us.

And then the second war came, and I begged Dora to keep her head down, to stay away, but she had to follow Dumbledore and his little band of rebels! Once she was in it, Ted and I had to come with her. And still she wasn’t hurt; at the Ministry, when you were stupid enough to get tricked by Voldemort, Bella went right past Dora-”

“Yeah!” Harry yells. “To kill Sirius! He was family too-”

“And then Dorra had to marry him. I begged on my knees for her not to do it; but she was as stubborn as any Black; when she fell in love, it wouldn’t matter that the man she loved was not worthy. Just like Bella.

So Dora married that cowardly werewolf that left her as soon as she got pregnant, and of course no one could ignore such a slight to House Black. A mudblood is one thing- a beast is quite another.”

“Cowardly werewolf! _Beast?_ ” Harry screams. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“That is what he was!” She screams back, and she looks like her dear sister indeed, _deranged_. “You ruined my family! Voldemort corrupted it, took my sister from me and turned her into a lunatic, and then you and Dumbledore finished it! You three took everything from me! Everything!”

“You’re insane-”

But a whimper stops him; he turns and sees Teddy in the doorway, tears flowing down his cheeks. He is wearing his own face and his Black aristocratic features scream at the world, lets everyone know whom he comes from.

But Harry’s never in his life seen a Black as devastated.

He’d seen anger in them, he’d seen madness and coldness. But he’d never seen this vulnerability, not in Sirius or Lestrange or Narcissa.

Fuck.

“Hey!” Harry whispers, hurrying over, kneeling beside him. “Hey, it’s ok, don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

Teddy flings himself into his arms and weeps.

(-)

“You look like you’d benefit from a tea,” Voldemort says, entering the never used room with the piano in which Harry had attempted to hide, still rattled by his “talk” with Andromeda. “But you’d only throw it away if I offered.”

“I need something far stronger than tea.,” Harry mumbles.

“Really?” Voldemort makes a gesture with his head towards Harry’s butterbeer. “That’s stronger than tea? Are you twelve? You have a cellar filled with liquor.”

“I’m not getting drunk around you.” 

How Harry would wish to go to the cellar, lock himself in, and make his way through ancient, priceless wine and firewhiskey.

A sinister smile. “Do you think I’ll take advantage of your inebriated state?” 

Harry’s cheeks flush at the innuendo. And there is no mistake that is what it is, not with the way Voldemort smirks. 

“What am I going to do, Harry? Hit you in the back of the head with the umbrella stand?” 

The way in which he just goes on makes Harry think he’d imagined the innuendo, after all.

He wonders if Voldemort is aware how he sounds sometimes. 

_Of course he’s aware. He’s doing it to rile you up._

But- maybe it’s one of those things, the simple, day-to-day things that Voldemort is clueless about. After all, he couldn’t have possibly flirted much, before. 

“I can do that even when you’re sober.” 

Harry just ignores him, staring at the wall. 

“As it is, I think this is the first intelligent decision you’ve made since you entered the cell they were holding me in.” 

Harry shudders, inwardly.

(-)

His foot slips in the middle of the steps and he very ungracefully stumbles on them, still somehow keeping his footing, trying to cling to the rail. But the rail will be gone soon and Harry already flinches as what is sure to come- 

A strong grip on his shoulder stops his momentum, righting him. 

“Um-thanks,” Harry says, dismayed. 

“It would take too much effort to clean the bloodstains,” Voldemort says, as impassive as ever.

He clings on to Harry for another second, before releasing him. “Grown men that respect themselves shouldn’t run. It’s undignified.” 

Harry rolls his eyes. “I am late for training-

“Or are you eager to carve your forehead again? Perhaps if you’d wake in time, you wouldn’t be late.” 

“Whatever,” Harry arranges his T-shirt, grabs his broom, waiting for him by the door. “What do you mean ‘to carve my forehead, again’? Because I never did. _You_ carved my forehead.” 

“You’re late, Harry Potter.” Voldemort says and departs. 

Harry rolls his eyes again. _Smooth_ , he thinks. 

(-)

“ _I’d like to tell her that the entire world is watching,” Bertina Nettles says, when asked how she feels about the recent news. “We all love that young, handsome boy, so this Weasley better not break his heart again!_ ”

“Can you please, stop?” Harry says for the third time. “I’m trying to eat.”

Voldemort puts the Daily Prophet away. He’d already finished his meal, cooked by Harry again.

“No one would have dared write articles like that about me. You only have to torture one journalist, in public, and they will back off.”

Harry’s tempted from time to time. “Chances are Ginny will, soon, if they keep going.”

“Fierce little thing, isn’t she?”

Voldemort has no fears about drinking around Harry, because he’d pilfered a bottle of wine.

He’s as measured with it as with anything else. Harry doesn’t know how one makes drinking from a glass look graceful and sophisticated, but there it is.

He was born and raised in the gutter, he’s the biggest nerd there ever was, he probably spent his Hogwarts years studying non stop and manipulating people and _when did he find the time to learn manners such as these?_

Harry would really like to know.

“Lucius told me she was the one to get possessed by my diary.”

Harry bites into his chicken, so he can have an excuse not to talk.

“She must have been quite taken with my sixteen-year-old self if she ended up drained and controlled, so fast.”

Harry does his best to ignore him. But that never ends as he plans.

“So it shouldn’t be surprising that she fell for another one of my Horcruxes, after. Nor that she dumped you, when you ceased to be one.”

Harry clenches his jaws, hard. He could tell Voldemort that Ginny liked Harry before the Diary, but then Voldemort would just say Harry’s been a Horcrux before the Diary. There’s just no point.

Voldemort isn’t pleased when Harry doesn’t give him a reaction. “I though you’d marry her. You had experiences with me in common and of course, she looks quite like your mother, all tall and freckled and with that atrocious red hair. And you do have mummy issues, aplenty.”

 _Don’t react, don’t react, don’t react._

“Of course, I am yet to determine if your daddy issues run quite as strongly.”

“Shut up!” Harry snarls and Voldemort smirks, satisfied.

But if Harry doesn’t react at all, it seems he’d just keep going, nastier and nastier until Harry does react. There’s no winning with this man.

“Why didn’t you find yourself another airhead darling?” Voldemort asks. “You’re not much to look at, granted, but with your name and wealth, surely there are enough girls to throw themselves at your feet.”

He’s right; it’s exactly why Harry doesn’t date. Because they only see Harry Potter, the Chosen One. They don’t want him, they want a lie.

Not that he’s been terribly concerned with dating, but he’d felt the need from time to time.

Hermione must have guessed his issues with the witches, so she had made Ron take Harry out on a “boys’ night out” in the muggle world, from time to time.

And eventually, Harry did find a girl- or rather she found him. She’s been daring, tall, with tattoos and a bike. And quite bold.

She’d taken Harry home, and they spent a lovely night together, but then she’d asked for his phone number, and Harry couldn’t give her one. She must have thought he was being a jerk.

And that’s how Harry realised he can’t date a muggle, either.

Harry can’t keep up with their rapidly expanding technology- year after year he becomes almost as clueless as Ron. Even Hermione is stumped by some new inventions.

Harry would never fit in, and no matter the faults of the Magical side, it’s Harry’s true home, even if he can’t go out in public without being hounded by journalists.

“Perhaps you’d prefer a man,” Voldemort carries on and Harry groans. He must blush, too, because Voldemort isn’t done. “Yes, I think you’d like that more. You need a _firm_ hand.”

“Do you enjoy hearing yourself talk?” Harry barks.

“Yes, I quite do,” Voldemort doesn’t miss a beat. “You’re tired of leading, of people looking up to you, to tell them what to do. You’re done solving problems. You want a leader, not a follower that’s in awe with you.”

“Just-”

“That’s not to say women can’t lead,” Voldemort cuts over Harry. “I’ve met some that would eat you for breakfast. But there’s something alluring about testosterone and that specific kind of aggression, isn’t it?”

Harry’s definitely blushing. He can feel his neck and face getting hotter.

“You shouldn’t hide it. It’s acceptable in the wizarding world, unlike the muggle world.”

“I’m not-”

Harry is not hiding anything. He’s just- men would pose the same issues as women, both in magical and muggle world. A hero, a false ideal for ones and a misfit for others.

“Though I understand is hard to discard these notions. It was hard for me as well, you know.”

“What?” Harry asks, instantly distracted.

“The muggles were even worse, back in the thirties and forties. It was a crime, to enjoy the same sex. They’ve tried to make me feel wrong, as they tried to make me feel wrong in anything else. They failed, of course, but then I have a stronger character than you do.”

Harry blinks at him. _Is he saying what I think he’s saying? He likes men?_

_It’s Voldemort, he doesn’t like anyone! Get a grip._

“Did you get along with Lestrange?” Harry blurts. “Bellatrix, I mean.”

Voldemort sighs. “As subtle as a brick to the head, Harry. I’d say you need to learn more skilful ways to interrogate someone, less _obvious_ , but you are a lost cause so I shan’t even bother.”

“So?” Harry persists, so very much used to the daily insults and jabs that he isn’t fazed anymore.

“Did I get along with one of my Generals?” Voldemort raises an eyebrow as elegant as the rest of him. “Why, yes, Harry, amusingly enough, I did.”

“I meant-” Harry bites his lips. Voldemort knows very well what Harry asked, but he won’t answer until Harry words it in such a way it can’t be misconstrued.“You seem,” He bites his lip again. “You sound as if you might have possibly liked her.”

Voldemort waits patiently, taking another sip of his wine. But Harry can’t say anymore, can’t ask “were you involved romantically” or even worse “did you have sex with her.”

He always knew she loved him, was obsessed with him, and Voldemort had always talked well of her, even as soon as that night in the grave yard, and then he’d lost his marbles at Hogwarts, when she died.

Voldemort must take some kind of pity on him, because he speaks.

“She was magnetic, passionate, and incredibly compelling. She was powerful and loyal. And dark lord I might be, but I’m not blind.” A tiny soft smile, that’s gone so fast, Harry wonders if he’d imagined it. “You should have seen her, back when she was young. Not in pictures; even magical photographs can’t capture her essence and beauty.”

 _Damn_ , Harry thinks, a bit puzzled. Voldemort shouldn’t talk like that; it’s unnatural. Harry knows people that truly love each other, he knows Ron that would gladly peel off his skin, layer by layer, to make Hermione happy, but never had he heard something so…well, _romantic_ , almost.

It’s because he’s so eloquent, Harry thinks. And because he always spits venom, so it sounds weird when he doesn’t and speaks nicely of someone instead.

And of course, that someone could only be a deranged psychopath.

“Yes, Harry Potter. We _got along_.”

(-)

_“I wish he’d be like you,” Harry tells Tom in the tent._

_Tom is so awfully charismatic, he’s never cruel, always knows what to say, how to make Harry feel better._

_Tom holds Harry close, rests his chin on Harry’s head._

_“You’re his jailer, darling. Would you be nice to someone that killed you and then kept you captive?”_

_Harry draws away. “I didn’t kill him,” He protests._

_He looks up and Tom has red eyes. Harry steps back. “Tom?”_

_“You did kill me.” He hisses, eyes flashing. “Every piece of my soul you hunted and destroyed; you killed me. And now you’re keeping me as a pet, to amuse you.”_

Harry wakes, mouth dry, heart thumping in his chest, wand already in hand.

He’s always a little surprised when he doesn’t find Voldemort there, bent over him with a knife.

_Your door is warded._

Harry made sure there are no snakes on it.

And yet he has his doubts about the insignificant amount of magic Voldemort might or might not have access too.

He’d have used it, if he could do anything important with it.

Despite what Voldemort says, Harry is really good at Defence. His room is properly, powerfully warded.

He wished there was a spell to keep Voldemort out of his head, too.

Harry had never stopped dreaming of the Locket since wearing it, those long nights.

Once, while drunk, Ron had confessed he has nightmares about it too.

Of course, Ron’s nightmares include torture, include dark whispers about Harry and Hermione going behind Ron’s back.

Harry’s nightmares are-different. For him, the locket had always been seduction, since the very first night he went to sleep with it around his neck. 

Only lately, Tom keeps shifting into Voldemort mid-dream.

(-)

“Good morning,” Harry mumbles, stumbling into the kitchen, heading to the stove, to put the kettle on, even though his tea is waiting beside Voldemort’s own.

“It’s mid afternoon,” Voldemort says, in lieu of greeting. “And it won’t be good for long. Not for you, at least.”

A shiver goes down Harry’s spine. “Why? What did you do?”

“So quick to blame me,” Voldemort answers. “Sit, Harry.”

Harry does, and Voldemort pushes the Daily Prophet toward him.

The Dark Mark floats over the ruins of a house.

**Pius Thicknesse and his wife and daughter found dead.**

Harry looks up, horrified.

Voldemort shrugs and takes a sip of his tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry! I swear I intended to write more plot, but I got distracted again by "Harry living in domestic Hell" as some of the lovely comments put it.  
> But I promise, we're getting serious in the next chapter.  
> I just had a rough day and I got self indulgent with this.  
> Let me know what you think!


	8. Chapter 8

The Aurors walk in; two follow Harry up the stairs, while another remains with the Minister, in the foyer.

Kingsley looks ticked by this- he was a soldier himself. He doesn’t like the idea of others going in first, to make sure it’s safe for him to come in, but such is protocol.

Voldemort is tense when they enter the library. Harry isn’t sure how he knows this- there are no outwards signs to indicate it, he looks as unconcerned as ever, but Harry can tell, either way.

He’s been tense since they received the letter announcing the “visit”, shortly after news of Thickness’ death made the rounds.

“Stand!” Williamson barks, approaching Voldemort.

For a second, Harry is sure he won’t.

But he does, he stands as if he’d meant to do it all along, as if it has been his idea.

The other Auror, a younger one that Harry doesn’t recognise, grabs Voldemort’s arms, shoves the sleeves aside, checking the cuffs.

Harry winces at the rough treatment, mostly because it’s unnecessary. If Voldemort didn’t have the cuffs, these two would be dead already.

Voldemort gives no reaction, but the rage in his eyes strikes something in Harry.

It’s been absent since he’d come to live at Grimmauld’s.

“Human Revelio!” Williamson says, and they wait for the spell to show them they are alone.

Harry is a bit insulted, truth be told, but he tells himself these are typical, sane precaution. Voldemort might have placed him under the Imperius, or who knows what else. Harry hopes that is why they don’t seem to trust his word that Voldemort is cuffed and no, there’s no one else in the house.

“You may come, Minister,” Williamson calls loudly, and Harry shares a quick, involuntary smirk with Voldemort, as Walburga goes off in the foyer.

“I told you to keep your voice down! Now you’ve started her!” Kingsley’s voice floats up the stairs. “Savage, take hold of the curtains, help me close them.”

“FILTHY BLODD TRAITORS TRASPPASING!”

“Harder!” Kingsley orders.

“ANIMALS! PIGS WALKING UPRIGHT!”

It takes them a minute or two to deal with the portrait.

Kingsley is already pissed and a little out of breath when he enters the library.

Voldemort sits.

“Stand!” Williamson snarls.

“No,” Harry intervenes. “This is my house,” he reminds them. “Everyone that wishes to sit, is free to do so.”

No one else does it.

 _How does Voldemort do it?_ Harry wonders yet again.

He is a prisoner, he’s wearing heavy inhibitors, has no wand, and yet he sits behind the desk, looking at ease, when everyone else is standing, wands in their hands.

Well, Harry’s wand is in his pocket.

“Who killed Thickness?” Kingsley cuts right to it.

“I don’t have prophetic abilities,” Voldemort drawls. “If I had, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Cut the crap. Tell me!”

Kingsley looks half out of his mind; it’s bad out there, Harry knows. Not two months after the Ministry held a very public burning of Lestrange’s body and assured people they will be safe, this happened.

Harry himself had received a dozen of letters, asking him what he thinks about it all.

“Listen, you worthless excuse of a wizard, if you want people to give you information, you should ask nicely.”

“My house!” Harry says, loudly. “No insults!”

Everyone ignores him, glaring at each other.

Kingsley doesn’t seem fazed, he’s probably received a lot worse, from Voldemort.

“I rather drop dead that speak nicely to you.”

“That could be arranged,” Voldemort leans back into his chair and even that small movement makes the youngest Auror flinch, halfway raise his wand.

“He doesn’t know,” Harry says, what he’d said before, in the letter.

Or at least Voldemort claims he doesn’t. For some reason, Harry thinks it’s the truth. Even if it weren’t, Voldemort will never say anything to the Aurors. If he does know something, he’ll tell Harry, once they negotiate a price, as always.

The Aurors barging in will not solve anything.

“You’re -naive, if you believe him,” Kingsley snaps.

“The boy said no insults,” Voldemort speaks before Harry can open his mouth. “Don’t take it personally, Potter. The Minister likes to talk, but he isn’t good at listening.”

“It must be Dolohov,” Kingsley says, jaws tense. “So you’ll give us leads on how to-”

“It wasn’t Dolohov,” Voldemort says, as Harry struggles not to squirm.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks. _Fuck_. Now the Ministry will go on a wild goose chase searching for a dead man.

“There aren’t so many free Death Eaters left; he’s our prime suspect.”

_Fuck._

Harry can confess, take the blame on himself. He prepares to speak, but Voldemort cuts over him.

“He’s deceased.”

_What?_

“Is that so?” Kingsley narrows his eyes. “And how would you know?”

Voldemort doesn’t even look at Harry, keeps his eyes fixed on Kingsley. They crinkle at the corners as he gives a disdainful snort.

“You should check your Aurors more throughly. Little psychopaths, some of them. You knew Robards had a sadistic streak. I told him where to find Dolohov, repeatedly, and he decided his colleagues are failures, since they’ve allowed Dolohov to escape the previous times. So he went alone. He bragged to me about how he made Antonim suffer, before he died, or something alike, I admit I wasn’t paying close attention to his ramblings.”

Harry’s heart is thumping so loudly in his chest, he’s surprised no one else can hear it.

_Why is he doing this?_

It speaks volumes about Robarts, when Kingsley’s and Savage’ faces show that they think this version of events had been quite likely to happen.

“Fine. But Lestrange is dead, and he was the one behind previous attacks-”

“He wasn’t,” Voldemort drawls, bored. “I distinctly recall telling you this, at the very beginning.”

“You lied. All the Death Eaters we caught testified it was Lestrange.”

“I happen to know personally how you people conduct interrogations. Let me throw a guess-”

Kingsley opens his mouth, but Voldemort just goes on.

“You arrested them, you asked them who was behind the raids. They told you they didn’t know. You refused to believe it. You set Robards on them. Some cracked. Robards asked leading questions, as he was prone to do ‘ _It was Lestrange, wasn’t it?_ ’ Because he wanted Rodolphus to be the culprit, because it made sense to him; because it was easy. Tired and sick of it, they said ‘yes’, to be left alone.” Voldemort smiles, though it looks- disturbing. “Am I wrong?”

He doesn’t seem to need an answer.

“And then you were all set on Rodolphus, so desperate to get your paws on him that you allowed Potter to come to me, in the hopes I will give him up. And I did. I gave him up. I held my end of the bargain. But he was not behind any attacks. Hence why they continue, and will continue to happen, even if he’s dead.”

By the look on Kingsley’s face, he’s as terrified as Harry.

They all got played. Only this time, they practically played themselves.

“I told you to stop torturing people,” Harry hisses, incensed. “I told you to just stick to Veritaserum.”

“He trained many of them to resist it,” Kingsley refuses to back down.

“I did.” Voldemort admits. “But not all. And I only trained three in the mind arts. So you could have used a Legilimens- Oh, wait. You probably don’t have one in your employment. After all, very few wizards are talented enough for it, and those people know better than to work for the Ministry.”

“So who is doing this? Who is behind-”

“I. Don’t. Know.” Voldemort enunciates every word, clearly. “Perhaps you will believe me this time. If not, why don’t you go to Azkaban and torture a handful of Death Eaters until they give you another name? That would be amusing, to watch you chase the wrong person, _again._ ”

“You know something. You always do.” Kingsley says. “And you will tell us.”

“Haven’t we played this game before? You know I won’t. There is nothing you can offer me, this time. Unless, of course, you want to take the cuffs off. If you do, I _promise_ that right after I kill you, I’ll find whoever is behind the attack and kill them too.”

“There’s nothing I can offer,” Kingsley says. “But there are more things to take from you now. Things you didn’t have, before. You look quite comfortable and well fed. How would you like that to go away? To return to your little cell?”

Voldemort’s face twists into a snarl.

“You have thirty seconds to say something, to start cooperating or you’re coming back with me.”

The clock ticks the seconds away. Harry pulls out his wand.

When Kingsley gives a sharp nod and the Aurors move towards Voldemort, Harry steps in, faces them.

“He stays here,” Harry says, and his voice isn’t shaking, neither is his hand, though inside he feels like jelly.

It’s not lost on him, the irony. The fact that he has his back to Voldemort, staring down three Aurors and the Minister for Magic, to defend him.

Kingsley looks aghast. The Aurors look pissed.

Three wands are pointed at him. Harry keeps his own trained on Savage, the biggest threat.

_What the fuck are you doing?_

“He kept his word; all the information he gave us, was accurate. We wanted Rodolphus, and he served him to you,” Harry tries to reason with them. “You know, even if you take him back, even if you torture him, he won’t tell you anything. _You know_. So what’s the point? What could his suffering help you with?

Kingsley doesn’t answer. They’re in a deadlock.

And then all the Aurors move a step back, choreographed, closing the gaps between them, covering Kingsley completely.

And Harry knows it’s not him or his wand that made them go into a defensive formation.

No, it’s Voldemort, that is standing now. Harry can feel him at his back, very close.

“I wouldn’t upset Potter, Minister.” His voice is extremely soft, somewhere above’s Harry’s head. “Word is, he’s quite fierce. Defeater of dark lords, and all that.”

“Can you sit? Just -please.” Harry says, because the tension is so thick, Harry can feel it suffocating him.

Everyone is trigger happy, and it would take one more move from Voldemort, one more provocation, and then disaster would happen.

If Harry wins, which is highly unlikely, against three Aurors and ex Auror, then what? He goes on the run with Voldemort? Because Kingsley would definitively return with reinforcements.

And if Harry loses, perhaps Harry could share a cell with Voldemort.

Kingsley seems to be thinking about the complete mess that would bring with the press. Harry Potter, arrested. And they won’t even be able to say why.

Hermione and Ron would know, though. And Kingsley isn’t fooling himself that they will let him take Harry, quietly.

“We’re leaving,” Kingsley orders his men.

Voldemort is still standing behind Harry.

“I want you in my office, tomorrow at nine, Potter.”

“I’ll be there,” Harry promises, lowering his wand as the Aurors retreat.

He waits in tense silence.

Someone, probably Kingsley, smashes something in the hallway, just to spite Harry.

“ABOMINATIONS! TRAITORS-”

The front door slams shut.

Harry’s shoulders slump; he turns and finds himself facing Voldemort’s green robe, up close.

 _His nose is touching it_ kind of close.

Harry steps back. He stares up at Voldemort.

“ANCIENT PURE BLOOD-”

“Why did you lie about Dolohov?” It’s the first thing he asks. “How do you know he’s dead?”

“You looked so guilty, last I brought him up. I know you would never ‘lose interest’ once you set your eyes on something. Who killed him? The curse breaker?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Hary says. “Why did you lie for me?”

“I enjoy lying to them,” Voldemort says, after a second. “It fills me with satisfaction.”

He closes the distance between them again. Harry has to force his neck to bend backwards, to be able to continue to hold his gaze.

“Look at us; accomplices in a murder. How far we’ve come, don’t you think?”

“It’s not like that-”

“It’s precisely like that.”

“MY ANCESTORS BUILT THIS HOUSE WITH-”

“My little hero,” Voldemort drawls. “Touching, truly, the way you stand up for me. But I do not require it. I don’t need your help or your pity.” His fury is back, though subdued. “Lord Voldemort needs no one, Harry Potter.”

“-SHAME TO HAVE THESE CREATURES DEFILE IT,”

“Will you help me close the curtains?” Harry asks, deciding that things are getting quite uncomfortable. _Too close, far too close._

And just like that the fury is banished, and Voldemort resumes his blank expression.

“I refuse to try to contain a magical portrait, quite a powerful one at that, with muggle means. It is an exercise in futility, as you should have surmised, after so many years.”

“AND NOW ANOTHER FILTHY HALF-BLOOD HAS TAKEN RESIDENCE-”

“How terrible are your transfiguration skills?” Voldemort asks, and he steps away, towards the stairs.

Harry can breathe a little easier, he can think again, with some distance between them.

“I got an Exceeded Expectations, for my O.W.L,” he says, walking behind him.

“No N.E.W.T?”

“No. I was busy being hunted by a murderous lunatic, so I didn’t attend my seventh year, nor did I return to finish it once it was over-”

Voldemort makes a noise that could be anger, could be amusement.

“Than it seems I owe you some lessons, to fill the gaps in your education.”

“Yeah, right, no thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Voldemort stops in front of Walburga’s portrait, who gets a second wind, faced with him and Harry.

“MAY MERLIN CURSE YOUR POLLUTED BLOOD, STRIKE YOU DEAD WHERE YOU STAND-”

“This is O.W.L level, so even you should manage it. Turn the curtain rails into snakes.”

Harry blinks and then -of course.

He grins, excited.

He points his wand, delighted, says the incantation, clearly.

The rails swirl, and after a second, two distinct snakes replace them on either side.

“Deplorable,” Voldemort sighs, no doubt commenting on the flowery pattern still imprinted on the snakes.

“I did it on purpose,” Harry smirks. “They look prettier this way.”

Voldemort hisses and instantly the snakes coil, slither around until they lock their heads around each other, forcing the curtain shut.

“You’re at best average, so don’t expect them to last long,” Voldemort says, but Harry’s happy to get rid of Walburga, even if temporarily.

“It’s ok, we’ll do it again, when they revert back to rails.”

“I suppose we shall.”

(-)

Harry’s a bit drunk. Perhaps more than a bit. Neville and Ron kept pouring him drinks. 

And Dennis keeps shouting, “It’s my birthday, you can’t say no!” as he brings Harry shots. 

Of course, he was still mostly fine, until he made the mistake of drinking one of Luna’s personal concoctions. 

Everyone is a little drunk, except Hermione, who watches them with clear judgement, as they get rowdier and rowdier. 

Neville is whispering animatedly, slurring his words in Hanna’s year. 

Ginny’s exchanging fluids with Yannis, draped all over him, at the furthers end of the table, Ron and George sending them nasty looks. 

Harry tries to say no, when Parvati offers to an eager audience to re-enact how awful of a dancer Harry’s been at the Yule Ball, how she had to lead, because he had no clue what to do with his hands. 

He tries to refuse, but he fails. He finds himself dancing and the way Parvati spins him, doesn’t help at all in that state. 

Even Hermione laughs. 

Parvati stumbles and he catches her, though it’s a wonder they don’t both topple down. 

“You know, Harry, I sometime wonder what could have been, if we’d taken a walk in those charmed bushes, that night.” 

“Not much,” Harry says. 

How had they ended up outside now?

He vaguely remembers her saying she needed some fresh air. 

“Oh, right! You were busy staring at Cho.” 

It’s as if it had happened in another life.

“What became of her, do you know?” he asks, curious. 

“She married a muggle. Can you believe it?” 

“Good for her,” Harry mutters, supporting his back against the Three Broomsticks’ outer wall. 

Hogwarts looms in the distance. Harry has yet to step foot in it. He thinks he never will. 

He won’t have to. _It’s not like I’ll ever have kids or anything_. Not with Voldemort in his house. 

_I’ll never have a family_ , he thinks, and it crushes him. 

When Parvati hugs him, her darker skin looking lovely and smelling even lovelier, Harry clings to her. 

It’s nice. He needs it, needs some comfort, needs something nice and human and warm. 

She kisses him, and Harry kisses back, though he knows he shouldn’t, that he should push her away. 

Parvati is a nice girl; she doesn’t deserve to be tainted by him. 

Besides, he doesn’t want her. 

He closes his eyes, and he imagines bigger, stronger hands wrapped around his waist. 

“OY!” Ginny saves Harry from the mistake he’s making. “What you doing, Patil? Taking advantage of my man?” 

_“Do you think I’d take advantage of your inebriated state?”_

Harry shivers. 

“Piss off, Weasley! Your man is inside!” 

“And we’re going inside, too.” Ginny comes closer. “I think I saw Rita hiding behind Zonko’s,” she whispers. 

They all groan, simultaneously. 

(-)

“Can I come with you? I don’t wanna go home. I promise I won’t wake Rosie-”

“Why don’t you want to go home, Harry?” 

Hermione’s soft, worried voice. 

“Would you want to be pissed out of your mind with You-Know-Who hanging around?” Ron, whom Harry is leaning on. 

“I really don’t want that,” he says. “I really, really shouldn’t.”

“Of course you can come with us. You’ll share the couch with Ron.”

“Come on!” Ron complains. 

“You stink of firewhisky!” 

(-)

Harry wakes with a massive headache and only bits and pieces of recollections from the night before. 

“Stay for coffee? Ron won’t be up for another few hours, I’m afraid.” Hermione says, bouncing Rose on her hip.

She looks fresh and chipper, clearly having been awake for a while, since she retrieved her daughter from Bill’s place. 

“I should head back,” Harry says, wiping his glasses on his shirt to clear them. “I can’t believe I’ve left him alone for a whole night.” 

“The cuffs work, Harry. They really do. I imagine he tries to intimidate you, I can’t even think how terrible it must be, but he’s only human. He can’t break out of them.”

Problem is, it’s not _so_ terrible. Not by a long shot, compared to what he’d imagined. 

(-)

They are out of tea-

That is to say, the only tea left is the one waiting for Harry. Besides that, the tin is empty. 

Harry’s mouth is dry, the taste is downright awful and _fuck it._

He drinks it. 

It’s hot, but not too hot, sweet, but not too sweet. The milk just enough that Harry can’t actually detect it. 

It’s perfect. 

“You should drop dead in about thirty seconds,” Voldemort’s voice makes Harry flinch. “You also should never indulge in liquor to the extent it makes you sick, the next morning,” Voldemort says, loudly, spiking up Harry’s headache. 

“Have thirty seconds passed? I kinda wish I’d die.” 

He takes another sip of tea and it soothes his sore throat, chases away the various tastes in his mouth. 

“I’m sure we’ll get to that goal, eventually.” A smirk. “You’ll look dashing in a coffin. But not today,” Voldemort sits in his chair. 

_It’s not his, it’s Sirius’!_

“Poison is a woman’s weapon,” he continues.

“That’s not true. You poisoned Hepzibah-”

“No, the elf did.” 

“No, you did.” 

“I was there, Harry,” Voldemort says, amused. “I Imperiused the pathetic creature, to kill its Mistress in whatever way it saw fit.” 

“Ah.” 

_He’s a murderer. Why are you getting comfortable? Why are you so desensitised to hear him speak of his victims?_

“Omniscient Dumbledore wasn’t so omniscient.” 

“Whatever,” Harry warms his hands over the cup. “Malfoy!”

“What?” Voldemort looks confused, and it’s a satisfying sight. 

“Draco, he tried to poison Dumbledore, but he ended up poisoning Ron, by mistake. It’s not a woman’s weapon!” 

“I know they were both originally red heads and had those tall lanky bodies, but even Draco couldn’t possibly confuse Dumbledore with Weasley.”

Harry tells him of the mead and of Slughorn; the love potion, the way Slughorn had frozen and Harry had to act fast. 

“My, my. People were trying to give you love potions? No wonder you’re suspicious of my drinks and meals.” 

“Yeah, I’m not worried you’ll give me a love potion.”

Voldemort nods. “Indeed. I wouldn’t need to rely on that, would I, Harry?”

A light tapping noise comes from afar. 

“That should be the paper,” Voldemort stands. “Eat your toast.” 

“I’m not hungry.” 

“You look like a teenager. I don’t like it.” 

Harry blinks; does that mean he’d like Harry if he gained a few pounds? 

Surely, that wasn’t what he implied. For the hundred of times, he wonders if Voldemort realises what he’s saying. 

Harry’s so distracted, he only puts it together when Voldemort’s been gone from the room for minutes. 

_Oh, shit._

Harry sprints up to the library, where the Prophet owl usually comes and-

Voldemort’s face is hidden by the newspaper, held open. 

On the front cover, Harry’s leaning on the wall, Parvati in his arms. 

The kiss looks far more passionate than he remembers. 

_Oh, shit._

Voldemort lowers the paper and Harry runs to his room. 

_Why?_

(-)

For once, he takes Teddy to Diagon Alley; Harry decided he won’t hide from the press anymore. They always find him, anyway.

People still stare at him, but Voldemort says the more he stays indoors, the more people will gawk at him when he emerges; that if he gets out more often, they’d get used to him, he’ll lose his God like status, if they see him shopping and simply living like any other normal wizard. 

So Harry bears it, allows Teddy to drag him to every store he wants. 

Businesses don’t want to take his money- _please, it will be my honour, Mr._ _Potter!_ _For all you did in the war_ \- and Harry’s in the middle of a fight with a cashier when he notices an unmistakable blond head outside the window. 

People stare at Malfoy, too, but with much less friendly eyes. 

Draco tries to pretend he’s unaffected, but he was never very good at pretending. He looks nervous. Harry remembers Luna saying Draco had married, months before, in a private ceremony and is now expecting a child. 

Jealousy blooms in his heart. Even Malfoy gets a kid, and Harry won’t. The ferret has it all. 

He has a father, too, and Harry watches Lucius Malfoy walk towards his son. 

He doesn’t look uncomfortable at all. And people are quick to stop their gawking. 

A few whispered “criminal” and “Death Eater” can be heard, but they hold more fear than contempt. 

Draco relaxes when his father reaches him and Harry grits his teeth and tries to turn back to his conversation, shoving a few gallons towards the girl-

“Harry, look! It’s Lucius!” Teddy shouts, and he’s off like a Firebolt, before Harry can grab his hand, out the open doors. “LUCIUS!” 

_This is what I get for listening to Voldemort_. _I should have just went to Charring Cross_ , Harry thinks as he has no choice but follow Teddy. 

Two identical sets of gray eyes land on him; Draco immediately lowers his, can never hold Harry’s gaze. 

At his trial he’d never looked up from the floor, as Harry testified for him. 

But the elder Malfoy has no issue. Harry stares right back. 

“Hello, Edward,” he drawls, in that aggravating way of his. 

“Hy!” Teddy beams up at him. It irritates Harry, because Teddy throws a fit usually when someone calls him ‘Edward’. 

People are pausing to watch, so intrigued even fear of the evil Death Eater won’t stop them. Not when Harry Potter is there, at least. 

_Great, now they’ll think I’m friends with him or something._

“Come Teddy, let’s go.” 

“But-” Teddy pouts, and his hair is already turning blond, growing longer. Harry hates it. “I want to talk to Lucius-”

“Go with your godfather,” Malfoy says, _as if he has any fucking input in what Teddy does or doesn’t do_. “The street is no place for conversations. Not for civilised wizards, at least.” 

The nerve on this man. _Civilised!_

Harry grits his teeth, very aware he shouldn’t get into a fight with a child around. 

“Good day, Edward.” Malfoy barely spares Teddy a glance. “Potter,” he nods, a short jerk of his head and he strolls away, his grown son following quietly after him as Teddy does after Harry. 

(-)

Voldemort finds it hilarious. “You have the worst kind of luck,” he says, gleeful. “Of course, that’s only fair, to compensate for the dumb luck you had when escaping me.” 

“He’s so- it pisses me off, how he walks like he owns the street. Civilised!” 

“Lucius is civilised, whatever else might be said about him.” 

Harry glares at him. “Calling Teddy ‘Edward,’” he goes on.

“Isn’t Edward the boy’s name? Nicknames are undignified.” 

“Who’s si-” Harry shuts his mouth. 

He’d almost asked ‘who’s side are you on’ which is something he’d ask of Hermione or Ron and most defiantly not something he should ever, _ever_ ask Voldemort. 

“I thought you hated Malfoy,” he says, instead. “You were annoyed he was set free.” 

“I am,” Voldemort says, a slight smile at the corners of his lips. “I do not hold him in any regard and it is frustrating he gets to walk around and keep his wand when I can’t. When I shall be free, I will pay him a visit.” 

Voldemort says he’ll be free almost every day. It’s been three months since he’s living at Grimmauld. Over four years since he’d been a captive. 

Harry doesn’t know if it just makes life easier for Voldemort to believe he will escape, if he says it just to mess with Harry or if it could be a possibility. 

But, as with many other things Voldemort says, Harry’s gotten so used to hearing it that it had lost all meaning; his heart doesn’t threaten to jump out of his chest, as it used to, in the beginning. 

Just to show him that he can’t scare Harry with it anymore, can’t cause sleepless nights, he declares, “I’d like to see that. To watch his face when you stroll into his living room. Bet he won’t have that superior stupid smirk then.” 

Voldemort smiles. “Oh, he will not. He begs so politely, Harry. You should hear it. We can arrange it.” 

Harry sighs, anger draining out of him. “How can you enjoy that, people kneeling, begging, crying at your feet?” 

“I don’t always enjoy it. It gets awfully repetitive after a while.” 

Voldemort always has his answers ready, no time needed before them, no hesitation. He’s used to rapid fire conversation, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think before his mouth opens. 

He uses his words like a weapon, the only one he’s got left; he’s quick and undeterred and has a counter for everything at any time. 

Hermione is like that- or can be like that. At least in certain subjects, more academically inclined. 

When it’s personal, Hermione takes time to consider what she’s saying, perceiving she can come across as insensitive and trying to avoid it. 

They’re both frighteningly smart and yet Harry has the sudden, surprising realisation that Voldemort posses emotional intelligence that Hermione lacks. 

Which isn’t fair- she’s a good, empathic person, but, like Harry, she fumbles sometimes in social situations. Even worse than Harry. 

Voldemort feels northing but loathing and condescension for everyone around him and yet he knows what to say to hurt his victim the most, or to compliment them the best. He is very aware of what impact each and every single word has. 

“I’d enjoy seeing _you_ on your knees, however” he says, voice shifting to something darker. 

Harry swallows thickly. “Dream on!” 

Voldemort stands and gives Harry an ominous smile, one that makes Harry’s stomach flop. 

“I hold no illusions you would ever bow to me, Harry,” he says, head tilted to the side. “I wasn’t taking about a lord and a disciple, nor about two adversaries.” 

He walks away and Harry wonders ‘ _then what did you mean?_ ’, has a burning curiosity to know-

Voldemort looks over his shoulder. “Just as two men, living _together_.” 

Harry can feel his eyes widening as he looks at Voldemort, like a deer trapped in the headlights, heart rate wild. 

“You’d enjoy it as well,” Voldemort says, and then he leaves. 

Harry stares after him long after he’s gone, mouth dry. 

(-)

_He is not Tom Riddle_ , Harry tells himself, over and over again. 

He is. 

Well, ok, but he’s not Tom Riddle from the locket. Actually, even the locket hadn’t been Tom Riddle, had only been a corruption, a trap designed to lure people in or scare them away. 

Voldemort must have inferred Harry had a weakness for the locket, and now he’s playing up to it. 

Harry will just have to ignore it, will just have to pretend it doesn’t bother him. 

Only Harry’s never been good at controlling his face. Ginny had told him he’s very expressive, that he wears his feeling on his face. 

They’ve been a couple at the time so she said things lovers say, how his determination shined through his eyes, when he was focused on something, how his anger showed in the tight line of his lips, when someone insults someone he loves. 

How _cute_ he was, when he was shy, and a blush would rise to his cheeks. 

Harry wonders if there’s a book on how to control that stuff. There mustn’t be, because then Hermione would have read it and she clearly hadn’t, since she’s as easy to read as Harry is. 

Voldemort mounts his attack. It escalates constantly since that day after Diagon Alley. 

Sometimes it’s just the way he looks at Harry, when he knows Harry will notice. 

Other days it’s small brushes, as he walks past Harry, startling him, because the man makes no noise, he’s suddenly there, his arms knocking into Harry’s. 

Then there was the _thing_ in the kitchen, when Harry was cooking and Voldemort claimed he was making tea. He’d moved so close, his chest almost touching Harry’s back as he reached to grab the sugar- _almost_ touching, but not quite. Harry had tensed up, part of him terrified about having an enemy at his back, the other-

Well, the other not so terrified, but nervous nonetheless. He’d stayed frozen, spatula in hand, minutes after Voldemort had left the kitchen. 

The bacon had burned, and he’d had to start all over again. 

Through it all, Harry says nothing, does his best to ignore it. 

What else can he do?

(-)

There’s constant pressure- it’s smothering. Harry’s so paranoid, every single word out of Voldemort’s mouth sounds like a sinister pass at Harry. And there’s that provoking smile playing on his lips, constantly. 

Voldemort is everywhere- in the kitchen, in the library, in rooms Harry goes to hide from him. 

It’s like an elastic band being pulled and pulled, expanded to its limit, and Harry fears it will snap, soon.

It has to. 

(-)

It’s chilly when he wakes up.

Harry looks out the window where a downcast sky greets him.

They’ll have to start lighting the fireplaces soon.

After he showers, he pulls on a thick Weasley jumper over his regular clothes and he heads down for breakfast.

He frowns when there is no tea and toast waiting for him.

Harry puts the kettle on, trying to dismiss it.

_It’s nothing. He just didn’t make tea._

Only everything Voldemort does or doesn’t do usually has a point to it.

_He didn’t escape during the night, stop with the paranoia. You sound like Moody._

Harry snorts, because for a second he imagines Moody living with Voldemort and that would have been horrifying and hilarious-

He remembers just then that Voldemort killed Moody. That sobers him up, fast.

When his tea is ready - _not as good as Voldemort’s_ , his traitorous mind whispers- he takes it to the library, even if Voldemort prohibited food or beverages in his sanctuary.

Harry doesn’t give a crap about that. _It is my house, damn it!_

He almost reconsiders when he recalls the exchange two days prior.

He’d have gone in the library with a sandwich and a butterbeer, flopped onto the couch and raised an eyebrow at Voldemort, daring him to say something.

 _“You want to be punished, Harry?”_ Voldemort had asked.

Fuck him! Harry thinks, shaking his head.

_Poor choice of words._

“Stop!” he groans to himself, holding on to his tea so tightly, he’s afraid the cup will break.

Voldemort is not in the library.

Harry’s unease grows. It’s past ten o’clock and Voldemort, without any exceptions, is always in the library at this time of day.

 _I should check on him_ , he thinks. _Maybe he escaped, after all. Maybe he’s ill or something._

But a part of Harry really doesn’t want to go to Voldemort’s bedroom, in which he hadn’t set foot since the very first day.

He’ll have to, though, and he will. He’ll just wait a couple more minutes, drink some tea. Maybe he’ll show up on his own.

Harry sits at the desk where Voldemort usually reads and he instantly understands what’s off.

The date on the Daily Prophet is 31 October 2002.

Voldemort doesn’t come down the whole day, and Harry doesn’t go to check on him.

_Does he want me to think him considerate? Does he want me to forget he attacked my family twenty-one years ago? What is he trying to achieve?_

Harry touches his scar, before quickly snatching his hand away. He has to stop doing that.

(-)

The next morning his tea and toast await, as if nothing had happened. Voldemort lights a fire in the library.

“How did you do that?” Harry asks, voice strangled, staring into the merry flames.

“Same way I make breakfast,” Voldemort says, and he circles around the desk to stand next to Harry. “With matches.”

“Ah, right.” Harry uses matches for the stove- he supposes the habit is ingrained, since the Dursleys, but always his wand for fireplaces.

“Too hot for you, perhaps? Your cheeks are reddening.”

The space between the desk and the fireplace is narrow and Voldemort is taking it all up- Harry almost ends up in the fire, trying to avoid touching.

“Why don’t you take off that horrid jumper, that should _relieve_ you. Did that moronic woman think it likely anyone would forget your name, or did she sew your initial on it just so she can pretend you belong to her flock?”

Harry employs a Quidditch manoeuvre to get around Voldemort, hastily. He immediately feels better when he’s no longer trapped between a hot place and a hot man-

_What now?_

Harry forgets to ask how he knows Mrs. Weasley knitted his jumper.

(-)

Harry wins the first match of his career. He loves it; he feels free up in the air, the snitch the only thing on his mind.

For a second, he is young and carefree, drunk with success. For a second, he can be like anyone else. 

But then he’s back on the ground, back in reality, and he only accepts to drink one butterbeer with the team, at a fancy pub, before heading to his dreary home, where he belongs. 

(-)

“Do you know anything?” Harry asks, as softly as he can, as nicely as he can, when they are both looking down at the Prophet where the Dark Mark floats above another house. “Anything at all, any insight, something helpful? What do you think?” 

An elderly couple, with no involvement in either war. Tortured and killed. She, a pureblood witch; he, a muggle-born. 

This time “blood traitor” is written in blood on the front door. 

Voldemort looks at Harry. “I think you should tell Andromeda to ward her house.” 

(-)

“It’s been done already,” Andromeda says, stiffly. 

Since their fight, they hadn’t exchanged more than “hello” when Harry comes to pick up Teddy. 

“Someone capable?” Harry asks, having just returned from Ron’s and Hermione’s place, where Bill and his colleagues had helped them protect their flat. 

Many people are doing it and Harry can’t believe they’re back to this, after _everything_. 

“Yes, specialists. I had someone come from the Charms Institute in Egypt-”

Harry whistles. “Wow, I know they’re almost impossible to get.” Not to mention expensive, but they just don’t offer their services outside their country. 

“Narcissa and Lucius have some friends there,” Andromeda says, chin held high, daring Harry to say something. 

“Listen, don’t get mad but- do you think Malfoy knows somethi-”

“Ask your friend, Shacklebolt,” she shrugs. “He dragged Lucius to the Ministry to interrogate him at least ten times now.” 

“Kingsley’s a good man,” Harry says, though he winces to remember the fight in the Minister’s office, after Harry refused to give up Voldemort. 

“I know. He used to come for dinner, when Dora was alive,” her face softens, just a little. “He sends Teddy gifts, for Christmas.” 

Somehow, this insignificant bit of information almost brings tears to Harry’s eyes. 

Maybe because he remembers Dora, joking around with Kingsley, in Grimmauld Place. Maybe because he remembers Kingsley, big and tough, breaking down at her funeral. 

“I know you’re not- that we’re not-” Harry falters. “But I’m here for you. Not just Teddy, but for _you_. You’re not alone.” 

Harry is gutted to think of this woman, alone with a child, in times such as these. 

“Thank you. But I’m not alone. I have family.” 

“Ok. Just- in case they- I’m here. Just wanted to say it.” 

She nods and silence falls. Harry sighs and prepares to go-

She catches his hand, soft fingers curling around his wrist, holding him back. 

“You’re not alone either. You seem to forget it. You look like a lost puppy. Just remember, when it’s hard, when you stay in that cursed house, that you have friends that are willing to die for you.” 

“I don’t want anyone to die for me,” Harry whispers. He meets her eyes and the tears he’d suppressed before, wet his eyes. “I never did. I never wanted Dora to-” 

He shuts up, a knot in his throat. 

(-)

Kingsley doesn’t contact Harry, doesn’t even come to check on Voldemort. 

“Strange, don’t you think?” Harry asks, when he finishes the last bite of his beef- _something_.

Voldemort cooked it. 

It turned out delicious, even though Harry can’t really enjoy it, haunted by the attack. 

“I expected them to come and ask you stuff, or at least for Kingsley to send me a letter, but it’s been almost a week and ...nothing.” 

Voldemort doesn’t answer, cutting his meat with precision. 

“They’re questioning Malfoy, Andromeda says.” 

“If Lucius knows something than rest assured he will talk.” Voldemort’s jaw twitches. “In any case, he doesn’t know anything. No one would trust a traitor like him again, not after he sold everyone to the Ministry.” 

(-)

Days drag by. The press is worse than ever, trying to talk to Harry about “events” as they call the attacks. 

They’re running long articles, reviving old wounds. 

The atmosphere of fear settles heavily around them. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry tells Ron and Hermione, when he goes to see them. “I’m so sorry.” 

Ron gives him a steady look. “It’s not your fault. Not everything is your fault, stop doing that, taking on responsibility that isn’t yours.” 

“I have Voldemort in my house, the man who started all this-”

“He didn’t start it,” Hermione says. “Don’t give him that much credit. Blood purists had always hated Muggle-borns, since the Inquisition. There were many dark lords since, there was Grindelwald- Voldemort is just the last, in a long line. Not everyone will suddenly get along just because he is no longer there to stoke the flames. This is a deeply ingrained hatred, fed by continuing prejudice. It’s not just in Britain, it was never just in Britain. But this sort of people never last long. They’ll catch whoever is doing it. It always ends like that.” She looks at Rose, crawling on the floor. “We’ll be fine,” Hermione says, but her eyes don’t look as confident as her words. 

(-)

Voldemort’s leaning on the doorframe, watching Harry.

Still, silent and _waiting_. 

Harry tries to ignore it for minutes, keeping his gaze on the broom catalog, trying to pick a new model. 

It’s impossible to ignore Voldemort. 

Harry’s been aware of this man, had been thinking of him, since the first time he’d heard his name, back when he was eleven. Most of Harry’s life had been dominated by first a shadow, than a handsome boy in a diary, and then the serpentine monster. 

And now yet another version is staring at him. 

Harry stands; he’s exhausted, he can’t sleep, guilt gnawing at him, fear of whatever is going on outside the walls of his house keeping him on edge, the way people had taken to writing him letters, asking for their hero to come forward, to do what the Ministry cannot, slowly driving him mad. 

He’ll go to his room and spend another restless night, shifting in his bed, mind refusing to shut down. 

Harry walks towards the exist and Voldemort moves, blocking it. He does it successfully, his body as large as his personality. 

Harry breaths in, deeply. The tension in the air grows, stretches, reached its limit.

Harry doesn’t stop walking, hoping Voldemort will just step aside if Harry shows him he’s not going to be intimidated. 

Voldemort remains where he is. 

Harry has to stop, inches away from him. He looks up. 

_Move_ , Harry means to say to but the intensity in those dark, brown eyes shuts him up. 

Voldemort’s been tenser too, since the last attack. But he looks more alive than ever, even in his stillness. 

“Kneel,” he says, voice deep and low, reaching straight into Harry’s soul and twisting it. 

The tension shatters. 

And so does Harry.


	9. Chapter 9

“Are you off your rocker?” Harry asks, but his voice comes out squeaky. 

Voldemort steps closer, and it forces Harry to bend his head significantly to keep eye contact. 

He’s very aware how close they are. It makes him dizzy. It makes his skin hot and flushed. 

“Kneel,” the command comes again, low and harsh, and Harry’s abdomen fills with excitement. 

_What’s wrong with me?_

He looks down at his trainers, trying to remember how to breathe. 

“I-what-” 

Voldemort says nothing. He just stands there, tall and imposing and it messes Harry up, fills him with agitation. 

_He has no power_ , Harry reminds himself. _I’m in charge._

Harry doesn’t feel in charge; he looks at Voldemort and sees power made flesh, cuffs or no cuffs. 

Harry hates it. Harry likes it. 

His mind is all wrong, he’s living with this guilt, with this terrible man and Harry wants him, deep down, somehow he wants Voldemort. 

He’s tired of fighting. He fought Voldemort his entire life, to no success, and Harry cannot fight anymore. 

He feels empty, robbed of everything, since the Forest, and isn’t it ironic that he only feels alive around the man that killed him? 

He kneels. Only because he thinks this has to be sexual, doesn’t it? Kneeling for that, it’s fine. It’s not like he’s kneeling for Voldemort’s ideas-

As soon as his knees hit the floor, a weight lifts of his shoulders. 

The agitation increases, he’s shaking all over, but he feels _lighter_. 

The only thing that’s hard about him is his cock, twitching in his jeans. 

“Good boy,” Voldemort voice wrecks Harry, fills him with so much emotion he almost cries.

There’s a lick of humiliation, of outrage in the rapidly dying rational part of his brain, but it’s just so hard to think. Which is the whole point; he doesn’t want to think. He just wants to feel something other than guilt. 

He must have closed his eyes for a second, without realising; he snaps them open when he hears a fly being lowered. 

_What am I doing, what am I doing?_ Dread and excitement battle for domination inside Harry. 

It’s not the first time he sees Voldemort exposed. There had been those glances in the Ministry’s holding cell. 

And there had been the dreams, in the tent. 

“I-” Harry speaks, though his tongue feels like lead. “I never-” 

Harry has only ever been with Ginny and that muggle girl, and both were feminine and soft. 

There is nothing soft about Voldemort. His cock is as big as the rest of him, though Harry supposes all cocks must seem huge when they’re in someone’s face. 

“That’s alright,” Voldemort fingers lock behind Harry’s neck. The touch burns Harry, excites him. “We have established you are a very passive partner. I shall do all the work, as per usual. Open your mouth.” 

And Harry, Merlin forgive him, does. 

He opens his mouth and stays still; Voldemort pushes in. 

There’s nothing hesitant about it, nothing gentle or careful. 

It’s rough and a bit painful. The tent dreams hadn’t been so, at all. That Tom was seductive, focused on Harry’s pleasure. 

But this is not Tom anymore. 

Yet the world quiets down. The guilt ebbs away as Harry struggles to breathe, as he’s certain he’ll choke to death. 

In those seconds, before Voldemort draws back to allow him a few gulps of air, Harry feels relief that he’s still alive, actually enjoys the air filling his lungs, instead of resenting it, as he had since the Forbidden Forest. 

Harry feels small and without choice, without any power, and he is not expected to take any decisions. All Harry needs to do is hold on, _survive_. And he’s always been good at that.

There’s a small moment, about halfway through, when he panics, when it becomes too much and he raises one of his hands, that had been laying uselessly in his lap- 

He rests it on Voldemort’s leg. Not pushing, not hard- just touches his leg, briefly, mindlessly. 

Voldemort draws back, and Harry breathes hard, big gulps of air. Voldemort does nothing, returns to that stillness of his, and Harry had fought him all his life and Voldemort fought back, snarling, hissing, refusing to back down- and yet now, all it takes is a light touch and he’s stopped. 

It reassures something inside Harry that he can end this anytime he wants to. 

He doesn’t want to. He lets his hand drop back on his lap. 

“Good boy,” Voldemort repeats and goes back to it. 

Harry wonders if it’s possible to cum just from hearing a couple of words- demeaning words, at that, and yet they still manage to please a very weird side of Harry’s brain. 

He doesn’t cum, only because he’s so focused on keeping his mouth open, focused on trying to breathe through it, allowing all thoughts to just flee from his head, chased away by Voldemort’s taste on his tongue, how hot and hard he is, at the back of Harry’s throat. 

When it’s done, when Voldemort zips his trousers back up and leaves without a word, Harry collapses on the floor, coughing and struggling to breathe, shaking all over. Even so, the world stays quiet, just a white noise in his head, replaying on a loop.

(-)

It all comes back with a vengeance, some hours later. 

Even more guilt, even more shame, topped with self-disgust. 

Harry leaves, sneaking out of his own house, like a thief.

He goes camping in their old, trusty tent.

He lays in his bunk bed, staring up at the canvas, motionless. He really should have died in the Forest. 

But he hadn’t, and not eating, not drinking, just laying in his bed for two days straight doesn’t kill him. 

Is this what Voldemort had meant by it? Had he foreseen Harry will not be able to face him, would run away like the coward he is? Giving Voldemort time to plot or escape or Merlin knows what else. 

He has to return. There’s just no going around it. Harry is responsible for Voldemort and he can’t just run away. 

He snorts with bitter laughter. _Responsible for Voldemort. What a joke._ Harry is no match for him-never has been. Not in skill, not in strength, not in brains. 

Harry should just take him back to the Ministry and leave him there to rot in more capable hands. 

He pictures it for a second-would Voldemort go quietly? Would he try to fight it? Would his face express anything? Would he feel betrayed?

Harry just knows he won’t ever do it- return him, like a broken toy. 

Voldemort means a lot to Harry. He always did, in one form or another-always there, always a constant. Always inside Harry, souls intertwined. And now that Voldemort is incapable to do magic, and he can’t fight-

Well, Harry _likes_ him.

Or likes Tom Riddle, that shines strongly through the Voldemort persona.

He makes Harry feel alive, which is all sorts of crazy.

(-)

Voldemort is still inside Grimmauld when Harry returns. 

Harry gets the briefest glimpse of him, in the library, before he runs up the stairs to his room.

The Marauders gaze at him, from the wall, alongside the mostly naked muggle girls, and Harry covers the picture of the four friends with a cloth, so they won’t have to see him like this. 

(-)

“Look at me,” Voldemort demands, catching Harry in the morning. 

Harry had been so close to freedom, just a few inches from the front door. 

“Harry,” he says when Harry just stares at the floor, gripping his broom tightly. 

With a monumental effort, he raises his eyes. 

Voldemort looks like he always does. 

There’s no mocking expression on his face, no evil laugh, no smug satisfaction. Well, no smugger than usual. 

“What would you like for dinner?” 

Harry expected a lot, but did not expect that. “Mhm,” he mumbles. “Whatever is fine.”

“We’re out of bread and tea.” 

_What sort of universe is this? Am I still sleeping?_

“Yeah, ok. I’ll get some.” 

Voldemort nods, and Harry shoots out of the door, heading for practice. 

It is easier, tough, to face Voldemort at dinner. 

Harry’s quieter than usual, waiting to be ridiculed, shoulders tense. 

Voldemort merely complains about a new law the Wizengamot had passed earlier that day, insulting the members of the Council in so many creative ways, Harry’s lips eventually jerk into a smile. 

(-)

He can’t face anyone outside his Quidditch team. People lost parents, siblings, children to Voldemort and Harry’s went ahead and-

No, he can’t meet anyone’s eyes. 

He avoids everyone but Teddy. Not that it’s easy to look at Teddy, who has been wronged more than others, but he’s just a child and it would hurt him to have Harry suddenly disappear. 

Teddy is a bit disappointed when they go back to Muggle Places, avoiding anything wizard, but Harry makes it as fun as he can for him, taking him to ice rinks and autumn fairs, to several zoos and to Madame Tussauds, where Teddy accidentally makes one of the wax figurines melt. 

“Listen Teddy, I know you didn’t mean to, but you have to try to be careful; we can end up arrested by their police.” 

Not that it would come to that, Harry has a wand, after all, but Teddy needs to understand precaution. 

He shrugs. “It’s just muggles. They’re dumb and easily tricked.” 

Harry blinks. “Who told you that?” he asks, quite sure he knows the answer. 

Teddy looks away. “No one,” he says, quietly, guiltily. 

“ _Lucius_?” 

Teddy doesn’t answer. 

Harry tries to keep calm. “Muggles aren’t dumb. They’re just like us, only they can’t do magic.”

Teddy frowns. “Well, then they aren’t like us, are they?” 

“We’d get arrested by Aurors, you know?” Harry says, because he doesn’t know how to best explain all people are equal, regardless of magic. “For breaking the Statute. You can ask Malfoy; he got in trouble for acting like certain people were beneath him.”

(-)

Harry wakes up hard, in the middle of the night. He tries to ignore it, but it’s not happening.

Unbidden, the memory from the living room comes to mind and he gets even harder. He doesn’t understand why- it should cause him nightmares, it does cause him so much shame when it’s daylight outside, but now he keeps replaying it in his head and his cock twitches and throbs until Harry moves a hand under the blankets, touching himself.

He comes after two strokes, head full of Voldemort.

(-)

“You’ve been so busy lately.” Hermione corners him after training, Ron flanking her, Rose in his arms. 

It’s been a month since he’d seen them. 

“Arm, yes. Quidditch -”

“Thank Merlin we caught you here, then,” Ron says, no nonsense. “You’re coming over, for dinner.” 

It’s not exactly an invitation. 

“So, what’s going on?” Hermione demands, once they’re in the Weasley’s flat.

“Noth-”

“Don’t say nothing!” Ron warns. “We’re worried about you. You’re there, cooped up with him and you suddenly avoid us, no one can get hold of you. What’s he doing to you?”

Thing is, Harry is too embarrassed to face them, since The Thing That Shall Not Be Mentioned happened. 

“He’s not doing anything. He sits there and reads and reads, and he cooks dinner.”

Ron blinks at him. “He cooks - _what_?” 

“He must be doing something. You’re clearly troubled.” 

Harry’s troubled alright, but not in the way Hermione would imagine. 

“I’m fine, really. Nothing is going on. I’m just tired, with practice and I mean, I want to stay home more, keep an eye on him. He’s not doing anything evil or suspicious-”

“He cooks. That’s suspicious!” Ron intervenes.

“Fine,” Hermione says, after a few seconds. 

“Great,” Harry smiles, relived.

Too soon. Far too soon. 

“Than we’re coming over, to see for ourselves.” 

Ron’s face falls. 

“No,” she snaps, when Harry tries to speak. “If he’s no danger to you, then he’s no danger to us, either. So what will it be, Harry? Is he or is he not a danger?

Hermione should have been a Slytherin. 

(-)

“Please, be polite,” Harry says for the tenth time. 

“I’m not a child,” Voldemort looks at him from his chair. “I believe I am far more apt to behave in society than you are.” 

“Fine, not polite - _polite_. I know you are. Just-don’t be creepy.”

“Creepy?”

“You have to know what I’m talking about.” 

“No idea.” 

The doorbell rings. 

Harry will not live through the night. Ron looks just as nervous as he feels when Harry opens the door.

Hermione walks inside as if she’s marching off to war, head high and shoulders stiff. 

There’s an awfully heavy silence as the three of them head into the kitchen. 

Voldemort remains seated at the head of the table. He looks at them, bored and unimpressed.

“Hello,” Hermione barks and Harry can hear the shakiness under it, knows her well enough to recognise she’s scared. 

“Good evening,” Voldemort responds. 

Nothing happens. They all stare at each other. And then Hermione marches on and Ron tries to grab her arm but misses at the last second. 

“Hermione Weasley,” she says, stopping right in front of Voldemort, hand extended forward. “We’ve never been introduced.” 

Voldemort stands and Ron hurries to Hermione’s side.

But Voldemort extends his own hand and then surprises everyone by turning Hermione’s and rising it to his lips, instead of shaking. 

Hermione’s face explodes into shock.

Voldemort used to be so predictable, once upon a time. Now he thrives in doing the exact opposite of what people expect, enjoys throwing everyone off. 

“Have a seat,” Voldemort says into the silence.

Ron doesn’t offer to shake his hand. He leads Hermione to the other end of the long table.

Harry sits beside Voldemort.

“Tea? Coffee?” Voldemort asks. 

“Right. Right,” Harry forgot about that. He stands back up and serves Hermione’s coffee, one sugar, Ron’s tea, two drops of milk and Voldemort’s tea, black. 

Another long stretch of silence. Ron keeps one hand under the table, more than likely holding his wand. 

“So, Harry, how’s practice going?” Hermione breaks the silence eventually, voice a little high. 

Harry tries his best to speak about it, repeats the same sentence twice in the span of five minutes, but that’s alright, because no one notices. Voldemort does, but he doesn’t count. 

“What about you, Hermione? How’s work?” Harry asks, desperate after another silence. 

Hermione goes off. Harry can never keep up with her, but now she doesn’t even try to filter her words, nervous as she is. 

“I’ve been reading this incredible book though, hard to put it down, and it keeps me up at night,” she ends a ten minute long monologue.

“Nice, that’s nice,” Harry says, absentmindedly. 

“Yes and -”

“What book?” Voldemort asks. 

_Dear God, please, please make it stop._

“It’s Muggle,” Hermione bites. 

“I was more interested in the title or a brief synapse.” 

“It’s Muggle-” Hermione repeats and Harry just shakes his head at her, begging her to just say the damn title. 

“Girl, I’ve been reading Shakespeare before your parents were even born, let alone come up with that silly name of yours. Will you name your daughter Perdita?” 

Ron frowns, looking at Harry. Harry looks back, just as confused. 

“I’ll have you know The Winter’s tale is considered one of the most-”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t good. I was merely wondering who would name their child after such a tragic character.” 

“Well,” Hermione says, leaning back in her chair. “Well, then.” She narrows her eyes. “How about Tolstoy?”

“Boring.” 

A very surprised look on Hermione’s face. She covers it, fast. “Bet Dostoevsky was right up your alley.”

Voldemort smiles. “Quite.”

They exchange more names between them that leave Harry and Ron completely lost. It goes on for quite a while.

“I am reading The Lord of the Rings,” Hermione says, finally. “It’s wonderfully refreshing, written by Tolkien, classed as one of the greatest writers of the century, and I see why. They just adapted the first book into a movie.” 

“What year was it published in?” Voldemort frowns. 

“In ‘54-”

“Ah. I’m afraid my knowledge of muggle literature mainly stops after ‘45.” 

It’s Hermione’s turn to frown. “Wait, you mean to tell me you read all that before you finished Hogwarts? All of Dostoevsky?” 

“I was done with him by the time I started Hogwarts.” 

Hermione makes an indignant noise. “No wonder you turned up this way! It is not meant for children!” 

“I’m fairly sure most children wouldn’t understand it, in any way.” 

“Of course not. You didn’t understand it!” 

“I assure you-”

“Agh! Read it again, you will see it quite differently! This explains so much, so much-” 

“Now, now, calm down. I will give them another go, you might have a point that I’ll see them differently. Of course, that is, if Mr. Potter will buy them for me, since I am not allowed to leave the premise.” 

_Mr. Porter_ -that’s new. 

“I’ll send them over,” Hermione says. 

Harry has never seen her so animated. Actually, he had; only it usually goes away fast, when her audience loses interest. He’d never seen someone actually keep up with her. 

They delve into arithmancy and runes after that, and they speak so fast about complicated theories, it serves to lull both Harry and Ron into a more relaxed state. 

They don’t agree on a single thing, that is all Harry is able to surmise from the conversation. 

An hour later, Ron and Hermione leave quite bewildered, as if not quite sure of what had happened. 

Harry is not so surprised. “You really are a charmer when you want, aren’t you?” 

“There was a time in my life when I was a no one. My charisma got me though seven years of Hogwarts and gained me a lot of followers. Satisfied of our little get together, Harry? Did I play nice?” 

“Aha. Yeah. Ah-thanks.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

(-)

“How do I make the goblins like me?” Harry asks, coming back from the bank, sweaty and with a headache. 

Voldemort looks up from one of the Muggle books Hermione had sent him. 

“Why do you want to be liked and accepted?” he asks. “It is an unhealthy attitude to have, trying to please those around you.” 

Harry rolls his eyes. “It’s just so awkward, every time I have to go to the bank. I’ve inherited the Black family vault ages ago, and I’ve never seen it; I doubt I would return alive, If I go down so deep into Gringotts.” 

Hermione and Ron are not even allowed to keep their money there; they have them in muggle banks. 

Since Harry is _The Hero_ and owner of the Black and Potter Vaults, the goblins didn’t shut down his accounts, but it’s always unpleasant to go there. 

“You did steal from them,” Voldemort shrugs. “And then I murdered at least a dozen goblins once I found out my cup was gone. These creatures carry a grudge like no one else. During my last reign, I put them in their proper place.” 

Harry remembers it. It was the reason Griphook was on the run. 

“Yeah; you’d think they’d be a little more grateful that I-” Harry hesitates. “That I - I mean- because-”

“Because you defeated me thus giving them their freedom?” Voldemort asks, returning his attention to his book. “In my experience, Harry, no good deed goes unpunished.” 

That is such a bleak outlook to have. Harry wants to say something, even if he knows it’s useless to try to teach a seventy-year-old dark lord that kindness has its merits; he’s thinking how to phrase it-

“Do not trouble yourself; once I get my powers back, I will eliminate them and you may visit your vaults in peace, then.” 

Harry ignores the “powers back” bit, like he always does. 

What he can’t ignore is that in Voldemort’s fantasies, where he’s returned to his full power, Harry would apparently still be alive and free to visit Gringotts. _In peace_ , no less. 

His heart skips a bit and he retreats from the library. 

(-)

Ron and Hermione- though it’s really Hermione, Ron is clearly not happy about it- insist to spend Christmas with him, at Grimmauld, instead of going to the Burrow. 

They would rather miss their second Christmas with their daughter, just so Harry won’t be left to spend the day alone with Voldemort. Neither point out that Harry doesn’t need to stay at Grimmauld, that he could go to the Burrow. Harry constantly leaves the house for hours at a time and nothing has happened. 

And yet, Harry chooses to stay home, even if Christmas at the Burrow is one of his favourite things in the world, hadn’t missed a single one since the war ended. 

Harry feels like they’re pushing their luck; last time went well, but that was surely just a fluke. Ron kept his temper, Voldemort kept his, and it just doesn’t seem wise to tempt fate. 

“I’m not cooking for a mudblood and a blood traitor,” Voldemort says, when Harry lets him know of the impending visit. “I don’t mind, otherwise.” 

“Don’t call them that,” Harry says, but he’s ignored, as usual. 

He’s the one cooking and even with the anxiety of the visit hanging over him, it feels kind of nice to make his first Christmas dinner. 

Voldemort hangs around the kitchen, saying disparaging things about Muggle traditions and how they’re supposed to celebrate Yule, how Harry should serve wizard traditional food and beverages. 

“Three of us are very familiar with Muggle Christmas,” Harry reminds him. “And by now, so is Ron, really.” 

“Oh, yes, Potter,” His tone doesn’t change, but Harry knows that when it’s ‘Potter,’ instead of Harry, Voldemort’s ticked off. “Of course I am very familiar with Muggle Christmas. After all, we must have had grand dinners at the orphanages, fat turkeys and expensive cakes, on top of the multitude of presents lying around,” Voldemort says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “If you want me to have a familiar Christmas, why don’t you serve me a dry turkey sandwich and give me a pair of socks as a present?” 

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, quietly. He didn’t think what Christmas must have been like at the Orphanage. 

Voldemort only gets angry, because Harry dares have pity for him. 

“I also got old, used socks for Christmas, at the Dursleys. Or a broken toy,” Harry says, to stave off Voldemort’s fury. “They only gave me their leftovers to eat, but at least they were good leftovers.” He shrugs. “That’s why I want to have a proper Christmas. How it was supposed to be. This is my first Christmas in this house, after the one in my fifth year.” 

Voldemort narrows his eyes. “How it’s supposed to be? I thought it was a celebration to spend with family, not with your mortal enemy.” 

“I would spend it with my family, but I don’t have one,” Harry reminds him.

Silence. They stare at each other for a couple of minutes, before Harry sighs and returns to the oven, to check on the turkey. 

“Ron and Hermione will be here, anyway,” Harry goes on. “They are my family.” 

Only that night, as he goes over their fight, turning in his bed, Harry focuses a lot on the fact that Voldemort didn’t receive presents as a child. 

He knows from experience how terrible that feels. But since Harry arrived at Hogwarts, he always got a mountain of presents. 

Did anyone ever give Voldemort a Christmas gift?

_Should I get him something?_

_Do you hear yourself? Really? A gift?_

Well, he has one for Ron and Hermione and they surely got Harry something- it would be weird, wouldn’t it, Voldemort being the only one with nothing?

_What the fuck does one buy for a dark lord?_

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, Harry goes to Diagon Alley; only most stores haven’t even opened, if they’ll open at all, on such an important day. 

Knockturn Alley doesn’t do celebrations so Harry reluctantly heads there, just knowing somehow, someone will photograph him. 

Journalists have no day off. 

He spends more than an hour walking around the stores- some things he sees, Harry knows Voldemort might enjoy, but they’re all dangerous to give to him. 

Eventually he finds a beautiful quill, elegant, with dark green feathers and an intricate silver nib, small emeralds caved into it. 

It looks very fancy, it costs a small fortune, it has a bit of dodgy magic, promising to make anyone but the owner’s arm erupt in boils, if used without permission.

It will have to do. 

“Look,” Harry says, adding four extra galleons to the payment. “I’d really appreciate if the gossip magazines won’t learn of what I bought here-”

“Beg your pardon, Mr. Potter,” the cashier says, pocketing the money. “But you’re not in Diagon Alley anymore. We know our clients value privacy, in these parts. You won’t see those pesky journalists setting foot in Knockturn. And if they somehow make it to my store, they won’t get a word out of me.” 

Harry nods, a little relived. “Great. Thanks!” 

“We appreciate your business.” 

(-)

Dinner goes well. A little tense, for Ron and Harry, who mostly stay silent. But Voldemort is civil, and he engages Hermione in conversation; she quickly loses her stiff posture, as it always happens when books are brought up. 

They don’t shut up through the whole thing, not even when they retire to the living room, for a cup of hot chocolate spiked with brandy. Voldemort refuses it with a sneer, preferring a glass of wine. 

“This is for you,” Hermione says, using her wand to send a small package towards Voldemort, after they have exchanged presents between themselves. 

Ron shakes his head beside her, gives Harry a look that clearly says “ _can you believe this?_ ” 

Oh, Harry can. 

“Thank you,” Voldemort says, after he opens it, to reveal a book. 

Something about the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

Harry waits until they are gone; Voldemort might know how to act with people, _too_ well, actually, but he’ll never let his guard down around anyone. 

_He won’t do that with you, either._

He might. He does sometimes. He is more himself with Harry, different from the cold mask he has when Aurors are there, or Harry’s friends. 

Harry gives him the quill, watching his face carefully, hoping he’ll like it, that he will feel some joy, something positive. 

Voldemort’s life had been awful, no matter what he might think- and it’s awful now, cut away from magic, a prisoner. Harry just wants him to have something nice, even if he doesn’t deserve it. 

“How thoughtful of you, Harry,” he drawls. 

Harry squirms, trying not to blush. 

“My gift to you was not strangling your ginger at the table, when he kept shovelling food in his mouth like an animal.” 

Harry gives a little laugh. “He eats more, when he’s nervous.” 

“And not stabbing the mudblood, when she dared contradict me on the uses of dragon blood,” Voldemort continues, running his fingers down the green feathers. 

Voldemort wouldn’t have done either of those things. He knows Harry would truly kill him, if he ever hurts his friends. He must suspect that’s Harry’s limit. 

“So really, I gave you two gifts,” Voldemort smiles. “And you only gave me one. Care to compensate?” 

And there’s something in his tone that lets Harry know exactly what he’s talking about. 

It’s the first time Voldemort gets even close to acknowledging the _Event_. 

Harry’s blood instantly travels south. 

“Goodnight!” he says hastily and retreats before he does something stupid. 

(-)

“Does he always act that... civil?” Ron asks. 

“Pretty much,” Harry confirms. “Well, he has some nasty answers here and there, but yeah.”

“I don’t like it,” Ron says, frowning. 

“You’d rather he makes Harry’s life a living hell?” Hermione scoffs.

“He already did that,” Ron shoots back. “And I didn’t mean-”

“I know what you meant,” Harry says, to stave off a fight. “It’s odd. But I got used to it.” 

Ron nods, letting it drop, changing the subject until his wife leaves to feed Rosie. 

“You shouldn’t get used to him, in any way. It’s-” Ron whispers. 

“Wrong, I know,” Harry looks away, apologetic. Fred died because of-

“No!” Ron snaps. “It’s dangerous. For you. I don’t like it.” 

“I can protect myself!”

Ron bites his lip. “You’re a great duellist; you’re -Harry, you are many things, but you are ... You always want to save everyone, even people that are beyond saving. It was always your weak spot.”

(-)

“There was another attack,” Harry tells Voldemort. “You won’t see it in the Prophet, because they’re hiding it.” 

Typical, really. All forms of Government are the same, even when good people end up in charge. It must be a curse or something. 

Voldemort raises an eyebrow. “And how would they hide that?” 

“It was in Ireland. But Kingsley called me to his office and-” Harry sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He’s been out of sorts all day. 

“Ah, I see.” Voldemort gets that annoyed glint in his eyes. “You’re to ask me, _again_ , if I know something, or they’re to come and threaten -”

“No,” Harry looks at him. “He wants me to join the Aurors.” 

_“It would make people feel more comfortable, if you were working with the Ministry. Restore their trust in us, when inevitably we’ll have another attack here.”_

_“Are you serious?” Harry yells. “Who are you? Fudge? Scrimgeour? They also wanted to use me-”_

_“They wanted you to shake their hands publicly and be seen coming at the Ministry. I want you to work on this Harry, to put your talents to good use and help us solve this, besides the benefit it would bring to the Ministry’s reputation.”_

Voldemort blinks at him, once, twice-

“You refused,” he says, a hint of anger in his voice, more a question, even if he phrases it as a statement. 

“I said I’ll think about it,” Harry shrugs. 

“It takes five Outstanding NEWTS to become an Auror and three years of training,” Voldemort points out. 

“Yeah, but I’m- they’d make an exception, for me.” 

“Of course,” Voldemort snarls. “You’d get preferential treatment, Saint Potter and his lucky scar-”

Harry stands. “You sound like Malfoy! The lamer one, at that!”

Voldemort stands as well. Somehow Harry always forgets how tall he is, even if he sees him every day.

“And you sound like an idiot. What will you do, when you’ll have to get out there and duel Dark Wizards? Are you hoping they will all wield wands that secretly belong to you and a simple Disarming Spell will work against them?” 

“I know how to duel!” Harry growls. “Stop that! Stop pretending I can’t do anything! I faced many of your Death Eaters and-”

“They all had clear instructions not to kill you-” 

“I was the best in my year at Defence-”

“Oh yes, what a threat you are to grown men that actually finished their education and studied the dark arts! Harry Potter, best in his year at Hogwarts, under the most incompetent Defence teachers the world has ever seen! No doubt you’ll scare them to death.”

“I know more spells than ‘Expeliarmus’!” 

“It’s all I’ve seen you use in a duel, spanning seven years. That and running around like a headless chicken, taking cover behind gravestones.” 

“Fuck you!” Harry screams, getting in his face, drawing his wand. 

Voldemort doesn’t even look at it, chooses instead to step towards Harry, until they’re chest to chest. 

Harry makes a frustrated sound. He can’t curse an unarmed wizard- he wants to, but then he’d be no better than Voldemort. 

_You can punch him, though._

For a second, he’s awfully tempted. 

_He’s two heads taller than you are_ , the rational part of his brain reminds him. 

He yells some more, instead. 

“I was a child! I was fourteen years old!” He sounds chocked up, remembering that night. He can’t associate the man in front of him with the horror that came out of the cauldron. Every day, it’s harder and harder to remember they are the same man. But they are. The polite, civil, sarcastic prisoner in his house had committed heinous sins. “How could you do that - _why_? Why kill Cedric? Just a boy-”

“He was an adult, and I didn’t kill him.” Voldemort says, voice low. 

“You ordered it!” 

“He wasn’t supposed to be there. It’s not my fault _someone_ decided to bring him along.” 

“Are you crazy?” Harry raises his voice even more. “Of course it was your fault! You ordered his death!”

“Why do you focus on the past? The boy is dead and you can’t go back and collect the cup alone, no more than I can go back and not give the order. It’s done with. Let it go, Potter.” 

“You think it’s easy?” Harry asks, shaking with rage and guilt. “You think- _let it_ _go_? You fucking tortured me!” 

Harry’s suffered a lot of injuries, since the Cruciatus placed on him in that graveyard, but none came close to the level of pain he’d endured that night. 

“You were my enemy,” Voldemort says. 

“I was fourteen! I never did anything to you! I-”

“I wasn’t thinking straight!” 

For a second, Voldemort has real emotions on his face, something other than anger. For a second, his voice gets higher. 

For a second, he sounds frustrated. 

The Horcruxes, Harry thinks. He’d thought it before, ever since he’d started visiting Voldemort in jail. The Horcruxes must have messed him up, - _how could_ _they not_?- and now he has all of his soul. 

He’s still unrepentant, he’s still a scheming emotionless machine with no empathy, but he’s _saner_. 

Harry doesn’t know if that makes him less of a threat, or if it makes him more dangerous. 

The second passes and Voldemort resumes his composure. Silence falls around them. Harry stands back, because his anger is dwindling, and he shouldn’t be this close. 

“You don’t want to go around looking for Death Eaters,” Voldemort says, after a few moments. “You know that. I know that. So why even consider it?” 

“Because people need me-”

“No one needs you,” Voldemort says, matter-of-factly, but to Harry is a knife to the heart. 

No one needs him. Not _him_. They need his name, like they always did. They need a Hero, a Chosen one. 

“They need a martyr,” Voldemort says it at the exact same time Harry thinks it. “Stop serving others, for once. Play your Quidditch, waste your time with your mudblood and your godson. Do what you want, not what someone else wants.” 

Harry steps even further away, pockets his wand. He deflates like a balloon.

“You won’t make a difference. Perhaps you’re not the worst wizard, fine. Perhaps you are a decent duellist.”

It is the first -not compliment, but something resembling an once of respect that he gets from Voldemort. 

“But you’re not unique. They have fully trained, experienced Aurors, that have been hunting dark wizards for decades. Compared to that, Harry, you really won’t make any difference. You only managed with me because-”

“I know,” Harry whispers. “I know.” 

“The world turned on its axis before you were born. Dark wizards rose and fell for millennia, without your assistance. Stop involving yourself in matters that don’t concern you. Do you want to make yourself a target? Do you want to make your loved one targets? Have you learned _nothing_?”

“Why do you care?” Harry asks. “You don’t care about my loved ones, that’s for sure-”

“I’m tied to you,” Voldemort says, simply. 

_He needs me_ , Harry thinks. Voldemort needs Harry, because Harry’s the one standing between Voldemort and a terrible fate. 

From all the people left alive, Voldemort is the only one that truly needs Harry. 

And he’s the only person Harry can actually protect, keeping him safe in Grimmauld. 

(-)

_“You were my enemy.”_

Were.

Harry stays awake, looking out the window, perched on an ancient armchair.

“You _were_ my enemy,” he whispers to the air. 

(-)

Voldemort orders him to kneel again. It’s not verbal, this time. 

Harry’s been getting more and more apprehensive, Kingsley hounding him daily with his offer.

To top it off, Ginny announced her engagement to Yannis, which propels the press into another frenzy. 

For a week straight he has to wake up and read his story all over the Prophet. As usual, most of it is false. 

The gossip magazines are curious about his love life. Ask if Harry has been left too broken to love. 

And that hurts the most to read, because Harry is broken. Everyone around him is getting married, settling down, and Harry- 

He’s washing the dishes, furiously, going by hand because he needs to do something to distract himself from all the anger and frustration in his head. 

He feels Voldemort a second before his hand lands on Harry’s shoulder. 

He freezes, dropping a goblet in the sink. Voldemort turns him around, slowly. Harry’s face reaches up to his chest, so he stares at the crisp white shirt. 

And then Voldemort’s hand starts applying some gentle pressure on Harry’s shoulder-it’s not enough to actually force Harry down. Just an invitation of sorts, though Harry isn’t really sure if it’s not an order. 

_Say no_.

But why? Harry’s fucked up, he’s fucked up everything, he refuses to help with the Death Eaters, he’s playing Quidditch and playing house with Voldemort. He deserves to be punished. He was supposed to be a hero, and he did not rise to the occasion. 

He never wanted to be a hero. He’d wanted to be a famous Quidditch player, he’d have liked to win the Triwizard Tournament, to get the pretty girl and be well liked. 

He never wanted fame for something that left him disfigured, something he had no merit in.

Harry allows himself to be pushed to his keens. 

It’s the same as the last time, just as brutal and humiliating. Harry keeps his eyes closed, tears running down his cheeks, caused by his gag reflex getting activated over and over again, but also because he feels like crying. 

He’s also rock hard during the whole thing, and that only cements his belief that he should be punished, because he’s not supposed to like this. Not with Voldemort.

The world disappears, narrows down to every breath he’s allowed to take, to the fingers that hold his neck.

(-)

He wanks off that very night, throat still very sore, his jaw still hurting. He comes as fast as the last time, writhing in his bed.

And then, he cries some more.

He doesn’t run again, sits down for breakfast the next morningas if nothing happened and eats the buttered toast that is waiting for him, as always.

(-)

Not a week after, Harry is preparing to leave the library, after he carefully places the book he was reading back in its ‘proper place’, less _someone_ throws a fit. 

“Stay,” Voldemort asks, from his armchair near the fireplace. It is a new armchair. Harry doesn’t remember owning it or buying it. 

“What?” Harry asks, stretching.

Voldemort watches him in a way that instantly makes Harry self-conscious. His hands lie on the armrests and there is no book in sight. How long had he stayed there, just watching Harry read?

“Take off your clothes.” 

Harry worries he’s being hypnotised or something similar, because just like that something switches inside him-his heart beats faster, his palms are sweaty and he has this need to do as he’s told. 

But no, no. This has to stop, really. It’s absurd and uncomfortable, on many levels, and Harry doesn’t know where it’s going, but knows it will end _badly_. 

“I don’t want to,” he says, squaring off his shoulders and meets his eyes. 

Voldemort leans further inside the armchair, getting more comfortable. He’s been off the whole day-tenser. A muscle in his jaw kept pulsing. 

“I didn’t ask if you want to. I asked you to take your clothes off. And I’m not in the habit of repeating myself, so don’t make me say it again.” 

“But why?” Harry asks to stall time. 

Voldemort raises an eyebrow, rests an ankle on the opposite knee. And it’s sinful, really, for anyone to look that good, but especially a 70 something years old evil dark lord. Yet here they are. 

“Because I want to see you without them,” he drawls, deliberately. 

Harry doesn’t want that. It would make him feel vulnerable.

 _You saw him naked, beaten and bloodied_ , he reminds himself. Only Voldemort hadn’t looked vulnerable. 

Harry already feels vulnerable, even clothed. 

Back in the tent, a younger Tom Riddle would pull Harry’s shirt himself, would bend to kiss Harry’s shoulder-

Harry pulls off his t-shirt in one swift motion. The jeans are tighter than he wants, because they’re new, they haven’t settled yet. Also because he bought them in his usual size that seems to have changed a little, since Voldemort keeps feeding him at least two full meals a day. 

He must look ridiculous and he feels so, as he wrestles with the jeans, that do not seem to want to part with him. 

Eventually, he’s only in his boxers. His hands tremble on the waist band. 

Voldemort watches, quietly. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Harry’s own. 

In the tent, Tom Riddle would let his dark eyes trail all over. But Tom Riddle had been a liar, Tom Riddle was only trying to protect himself. 

_And Voldemort isn’t?_

“Why are you doing this?” Harry asks, voice so wretched he can hear it himself, the desperation inside. 

Voldemort doesn’t answer. 

Harry pulls the boxers off and he can’t look at Voldemort anymore. He focuses on the carpet. The luscious, clean carpet that has none of the holes in it that it used to have.

But as interesting as that is, it can’t distract him from what’s going on. He was right. He feels all sorts of vulnerable and self-conscious, and he has to make a huge effort not to cover himself with his hands. 

Harry had shared a room with four other boys at Hogwarts. He’d been in a full locker room a few times. He knows he’s at best average in size and it never bothered him with Ginny or that muggle girl, but it bothers him now, being watched by Voldemort, whom Harry knows is much bigger than ‘average’.

Just another way in which Harry comes up short, compared to the dark lord. 

When he looks back up, Voldemort’s walking towards him. Harry flinches slightly, but very soon Voldemort passes by him and Harry can feel him at his back. He touches Harry’s shoulder and his fingers are so hot, so long- Harry shudders under them. 

Voldemort guides Harry a little to the left, and he’s suddenly facing a full-length mirror that had most defiantly never been there before. 

The image shocks him. 

Harry looks even smaller, in every aspect, with Voldemort looming at his back, at least two heads taller, almost twice as wide, in shoulder span. 

It’s unbearable. He closes his eyes- 

“No. Look.” 

Harry shakes his head. The fingers grab his throat, suddenly. Harry’s eyes snap open instinctively and his own hands grab at Voldemort’s forearm. 

Voldemort is barley squeezing, really. There’s almost no pressure at all, but it’s such a visceral thing to have the fingers of the man that tried to kill him so many times, curled around his throat. 

The image in the mirror stops Harry. He looks wild, skin pale, every scarstanding out, his green eyes making a startling contrast with the rest of him. 

“Let go,” Voldemort demands, and Harry allows his arms to fall beside his body. 

Voldemort's other hand grabs Harry’s right wrist, his finger press against the scar Pettigrew left with the knife, back in the graveyard. 

Harry flinches, but Voldemort’s hand is already moving away. This time, it stops on Harry’s chest, on the oval burn the locket had left behind, when he’d submerged himself in water, trying to strangle Harry. 

The touch feels good over the scared skin. _This is so sick_ , Harry thinks and this time, Voldemort moves his fingers very, _very_ slowly and Harry just knows where they will end up.

They both watch those fingers in the mirror, as they push away Harry’s hair and rest on the lightning scar. 

Harry swallows so hard he almost covers the sharp intake of breath Voldemort takes. Almost. 

Their eyes meet, in the mirror, and it just melts Harry inside, instantly lifts his temperature, the intensity in Voldemort’s gaze.

He’s looking at Harry the same way he’d looked at the locket, in Hokey’s memory. Full of possession. 

_And why shouldn’t he?_ He’s already claimed Harry so many times. Harry has marks all over his body, left by this man, in some form or another. 

The fingers leave the scar and go straight to Harry’s cock. 

So many emotions are strangling him, more effective than Voldemort’s fingers, but none are sexual. 

Still, his body responds, and does it fast. 

Harry struggles a little, so very sensitive. Voldemort’s fingers start squeezing his throat harder, as the ones around his cock move faster. 

Every time Harry closes his eyes, Voldemort demands he opens them, strangles him a little harder. 

It’s far worse than having his face fucked. Far worse, because Harry is enjoying this now, properly enjoying it, even if a part of him doesn’t want to. The heat pools in his lower abdomen, and his hips move upwards, against his will, to meet Voldemort’s hand. 

When the fingers are so tight against his neck that Harry cannot breathe anymore, he comes, ropes of white splashing on his chest and on Voldemort’s hand.

It must have lasted less than five minutes, from start to finish, and not once did Harry try to fight it, his arms remained motionless at his sides the whole time. 

As soon as he’s let go, Harry lunges for his boxers, shaking all over. He won’t even bother with his jeans. He turns to flee the room, he’s almost at the door- 

“Forgot something?” Voldemort asks, and there’s such glee and derision in his tone, it rips Harry’s heart. 

Furious, on top of deeply humiliated, he turns to say something -

His wand, his holly wand, is between Voldemort’s fingers. There’s a terrifying smile on his face. 

Harry freezes. He sees Voldemort, _truly_ , for the first time since he came to Grimmauld Place.

Harry is all confused, frightened and mostly naked. Defenceless.

And Voldemort is in his black robe, wand in hand. 

_Do not let him get your wand under any circumstances_ , Kingsley’s voice rings in his head.

Voldemort points the wand at Harry, casually, as he walked closer and Harry can do nothing but watch, in a mixture of horror and fascination, trapped between being fourteen in a graveyard, and twenty two in the library. 

Voldemort’s wrists flicks and Harry dodges to the right, because Voldemort seemed to be casting to the left- it was a feint and it hits him, anyway.

Harry feels it touching his stomach, and he looks down, expecting blood and guts-

There’s nothing. Not a thing. The skin is uncut and clean-

Too clean. His semen had just been all over it, Harry had seen himself cum in the mirror, across his stomach and Voldemort’s fingers. 

“So easily spooked, Harry. You disappoint me.” The wand is pointed at him once more, when he looks up, but this time Voldemort is holding it by the wrong end, offering the handle to Harry. 

Harry grabs it, points it at Voldemort’s heart. 

“Go and sleep. You’re tired.” 

“You can do magic,” Harry growls. He looks at the armchair again. At the mirror. The repaired carpet. 

“You always knew I could. I told you since before you got me out.” Voldemort smiles, that charming smile of his. “It’s not much but-useful for a few tricks.” 

He runs his hand over a paper on the desk and a rose takes its place. Voldemort takes it and extends it to Harry. 

“That’s a lot more than a few tricks. It’s advanced transfiguration.” 

“I could do this as a child, Harry. Might be it’s a lot for you, but it’s nothing to me.” 

Voldemort comes closer, walks right into Harry’s wand, gently pushes it away and shoves the rose under Harry’s waist band. “Goodnight.” 

Minutes later, when Harry pulls off his boxers to jump in the shower, the rose falls off, along with a drop of blood. 

It was a thorny one. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please, comment and review. Criticism is welcomed.


End file.
